Anyone see this? Dell halts PDA development

[nathanwj]

Looking at most of the PDAs on the market, they are all the same, with simple variations on design. It does not take a researcher to decide that a PDA should have WM5, 128MB of RAM, a square display, built-in Bluetooth and a long life battery. Sales departments pick features like these, engineers formalize the specs, if necessary and find ways to get it built. Companies do not need R&D for mundane tasks like this.

HTC already builds most PDAs and has a core of good engineers. Any company wanting to market their own device only has to provide specs to HTC and dicker over the cost and deadlines. I suspect that anyone wanting a Windows Mobile device only has to ask for one.

Now this does not mean that Dell can get by without R&D for advanced technologies, but it does mean that they can continue to market a line of PDAs for as long as they want and never spend a dollar on research.

yeah, they may habe all had the same specs, but dell was diffrent. it was about 100 dollars less than the competition... i frankly think dell is stupid for dumping pda's.... they could really have exploited this and done great things..... (made it into gaming specific/buisness/etc... buying palm... etc....) could have eben way better!!!

[mingkee]

though Dell, and even HP stop developing PDAs, there's still HTC!!!!!
now HTC takes its own brand, and no more Qtek and Dopod
personally I hope HTC will release Wizard type PDA phone with VGA screen, with quad-band GSM and quad-band (850/1900/International/AWS) UMTS/HSDPA

[notenufsleep]

woot? don't have to spend money on newer technology

[Watti]

What are the options for those of us who love our Axim's but might need to ungrade in the next few years? What's the company(ies) which will be the ones we need to turn too?

Watti.

[star882]

Besides the Asus, I have seen a Samsung unit at Fry's. Like the Asus, it runs Windows XP.

[bigdave240]

What are the options for those of us who love our Axim's but might need to ungrade in the next few years? What's the company(ies) which will be the ones we need to turn too?

Watti.

Most likely by the time you are ready to upgrade in the next couple of years the whole picture will have changed a couple of times anyway. Have to wait and see but I am with you, I like my Axim form and fit and hope they have somethign like it when I am ready.

[Spud387]

I just bought an axim, yes so they stopped production it sucks, but pda will get you a couple years still. (If you use it for organization needs mostly. This site I will see still living on, there are many ppl out there with axims that constantly want/need help and 3rd party programs and accessories won't stop yet

[AdamaDBrown]

I just bought an axim, yes so they stopped production it sucks

Actually, there's never been any indication that Dell stopped production on anything. That's apart from the fact that there's only rumors, no official information, on the subject of whether or not they've shut down R&D.

[Juraj]

This is a true story. As part of my job, I am in weekly contact with a local Dell sales rep. I asked him straight up 2 weeks ago, and he confirmed that the X51 is the last PDA that Dell would produce.

He acknowledged that Dell has developed in-house prototypes of cell phone/PDA combos, but does not know if they will reach market. If no standard emerges in that market, chances are, Dell will never sell it.

Dell has had Tablet PC prototypes in-house for over 3 years, but has yet to release a model - again, because no standard has emerged, and the demand is insufficient to justify it.

Those smartphones should be availaible in about 6 months..so said it our new product trainer

[Ashton]

I've always been torn between the Ipaq and the Axim; comparing prices and features... I've always bought Axim... Now that Dell's gonna stop making them, I //would// go to HP, but if they're stopping too (as somoen above said) I guess I'm going to have to go see how Toshiba's doing, they had good PDAs at one point in history...

This does explain why Dell's giving away it's X51s right now...

[mmo]

I did not want to at first but my wife never had a single problem with hers and I had also bought one for my son (the one with the biometric fingerprint reader for logging in). They work like champs and after a while I wanted one too. It seems my Dell Axim has a memory problem (when loading up Riven it fails when crossing the bridge).

Strange - I had the exact opposite experience. All HPs were buggy as hell! And I went through quite a number of them: 5450, 5550, 4700. Plain out of the box they all worked fine, but as soon as I had loaded a couple of apps that I consider essential all I ever got were alarms that never went off, hangs, crashes, etc. Whenever I actually needed some info and needed it now, the HPs always were just useless bricks (one I actually once smashed against a wall in rage).

It was such a good experience to finally find a PDA (in my case the Axim X51v) that actually worked and that I didn't have to reset and reboot all the time and that provided me info when I turned them on.

I doubt that I'll ever try an HP again...

Michael

[mdblanke03]

For real, I'll keep it seperate..I dont want to combine them.

I am just the opposite. I do want to combine my phone and PPC. Lugging two devices around on my belt clip gets old fast. I never go anywhere without my phone so the PPC combo would be perfect for me. I do not use my PPC for many games or the internet but for contacts, e-mail, calander, task and other organizing items plus the ocassional video or mp3. You do lose out on size of the screen and speed of the processor but devices like the Sprint PPC-6700 has a lot of features of other PPC including a mini SD slot (which they are up to a 1GB now) plus it is a phone.

[ke4emk]

May just be a rumor...

Dell apparently halted R&D development of PDA products since the middle of 2005, when Dell's Taiwan Design Center (TDC) completed development of the PC vendor's last Axim-series device, which was manufactured by High Tech Computer (HTC), according to market sources.

According to the sources, Dell's TDC switched all PDA-related R&D resources to the notebook segment in the middle of 2005, following the company's plan of reducing the number of its R&D staff at its handheld device division at the end of 2004.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/02/dell_pda_development/

(laughing)...well, this might explain why my x51v came in 2 months late when I ordered it. Just sold off the 2 X5's that I had, for this one...

Sheesh...wonder where my "replacement" unit will come from if I ever drop this puppy...

[JamX51v]

Just thinking ahead but is there another source for battery replacement coz I imagine the battery would be the first to expire, wouldn't it?