According to Tyrannozaurus, Sharp has decided to put its Zaurus Linux PDA line to an end. Production of the Zaurii will end sometime in February, there is no information on any kind of successor so far.
Third parties have quickly scurried in to announce that spare parts will still be available for ‘a long time’ - whatever that means. Also, there will still be a last release of OpenZaurus.
IMHO, this is the “repetition” of the classic Clamshell dilemma. Many companies manufactured clamshell handhelds(Handheld PC’s, Palm OS powered Sony Clie UX50, HP’s DOS handhelds, and so on), but none of them could transform the segment into a reliable source of income and eventually discontinued these PDA’s.
Why do you think that all clamshells fail?
That’s sad to hear. I hope they’ll stick with Linux and homebrew. That’s the future.
IMHO these “pdas?” were just too big, the should have sticked the basic pda form factor, get them slimer and maybe cooler (despite the fact they are big they look sdg)I think the sl-5xxx form factor was much better but could have been improved by removing the qwerty…
I have been expecting this. Most Zaurus users know it was gonna come. Either now or 1 more model.
Sharp has already been making WM Smartphones. They are really nice.
In the Zaurus’s case, you need to remember that when the clamshell design Zauruses were released, Sharp decided to make it a Japan market only model.
So I don’t think it’s a surprise that it didn’t make a big splash in the world marketplace.
But on the other hand, I think if you see the vibrant and active Zaurus community on the OESF.org/forums you’d say ‘wow’ look at how much is going on with the Zaurus IN SPITE OF the total lack of Sharp support outside of Japan. Also, the fact that everyone outside of Japan couldn’t go to their local electronics store to buy one and had to make the effort to either get one from a shop in Japan or one of the few importers in the USA or Europe, etc…
I do think that if Sharp had decided to put the necessary resources into supporting AND marketing the Zaurus line properly in the world marketplace it would have been a much bigger player. However, they didn’t and so it goes…
Wow, this comes as a shock to me. I just got a used C860 a few months back and have really gotten into the platform.
I hope this doesn’t mean the end of Zaurii in general :^(