Handspring Introduces MP3 Add-on

S A N  J O S E, Calif., Sept. 6, 2000 -- A new MP3 player expansion slot for

Handspring Visors is poised to hit the market in October, heating

up the competition in the booming market of handheld computer

devices and their accessories.

Good Technology, Inc. planned today to unveil its SoundsGoodaudioplayer at the DEMO Conference in Pasadena, Calif. The deviceturns a Handspring Visor into a digital music player. With 64megabytes of built-in memory, the company claims it gives the usermore than an hour of music.

Innogear Inc., based in Morgan Hill, started shipping a similarproduct for Handspring users a week ago.

Good Technology, a Redwood City-based developer of add-ons forpersonal digital assistants, is hoping to tap into the scorchingmarket for handhelds. Market researcher Dataquest expects globalsales of computer handhelds to quadruple in the next three years to32 million units worth $7.2 billion.

At the same time, Good Technology is responding to the growingpopularity of MP3 digital music technology. The company said nearlyhalf of the users of Visor have expressed interest in an MP3 modulefor the device’s Springboard expansion slot.

Costly Add-on for Inexpensive Visor

Handspring’s Visor is a cousin of Palm handheld devices that usethe same operating system, and the Visor has quickly become apopular alternative, grabbing 27 percent of the retail market,according to several research firms. The Visor, which sells forbetween $149 and $249, was the first — and, for at least a whilelonger, is the only such handheld — to feature an expansion slotcapable of transforming it into everything from an electronic bookto a global positioning device.

Digital music players on handheld devices are nascent but notcompletely novel: The newest generation of PocketPCs made by CompaqComputer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Casio Computer Co. have thecapability. But unlike the smaller, sleeker Palm devices and theVisor, sales of PocketPCs — which sell between $499 and $599—arestill struggling. In addition, the MP3 accessory made for the Visorconsumes less power, analysts said.

“If you have a Visor and you like the idea of an MP3 player,you’re really going to want this thing,” Martin Reynolds, vicepresident and research fellow at Gartner Group’s Dataquest, said ofthe SoundsGood player. “This is an emerging technology to watch.”

But whether consumers are ready to pay for the digital musicaccessory has yet to be seen, said Ken Smiley, a senior industryanalyst with Giga Information Group.

The SoundsGood audioplayer is priced at $269 — more than theVisor itself.

“It’s a nice device,” Smiley said, “But I’m concerned theprice is not going to set well with the consumers who purchased theHandspring for the reasons they purchased it for.”