Hewlett-Packard's struggling hand-held computers division is hoping to regain lost market share with its two latest colour PDAs, both featuring Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 software.
The HP Jornada 565 and 568 PDAs, each weighing about 173 grams, come at a time when Pocket PCs, mainly Compaq iPaqs, are gaining market share from Palm Computing.
However, HP has been performing poorly in the hand-held market compared to Compaq, which is enjoying relatively strong sales for its iPaq hand-helds.
According to Gartner Group, Compaq's iPaq will pass Palm Computing's hand-held in revenues by the second quarter of next year. Palm is forecast to sell more units, but Compaq's device, which is twice the price of a Palm Vx, will make more money.
Kitty Fok, personal systems analyst at International Data Corp, said Compaq's iPaq success lay in its partnerships with stockbrokers, insurance companies, telecoms, mobile operators and airlines. 'People buy hand-held systems because of the application, not because of the hardware,' she said. 'HP has been weak in this area.'
In an interview with the South China Morning Post two months ago, the vice-president of field operations for HP Asia-Pacific, James Radford, admitted the Jornada series had been too focused on retail instead of the corporate market.
The two new Jornadas see HP switching its strategy to focus on the corporate user, bundling a range of business and networking applications.