.KEYWORD expansion
.FLYINGHEAD EXPANSION TECHNOLOGY
.TITLE Battle lines drawn in expansion war
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY As expansion technology continues to gain popularity, the battle lines are becoming more defined. Vladmir Campos takes a look back at the history of expansion technology and considers the major players in the current campaign for industry standard.
.AUTHOR Vladimir Campos
I could never really understand why Handspring didn’t adopt one of the major standards available in the market instead of creating a new expansion system for their handhelds. And although no reasonable explanation was ever given, the Springboard system ended up becoming the first really popular expansion system for Palm OS handhelds. Some even say Handspring’s incredible popularity came from the Springboard expansion system.
They became so popular that two yeas ago, in August of 2000, during a chat at Redherring.com, Jeff Hawkins declared, "We will continue to make products with the Springboard slot and intend to maintain compatibility. That’s not a guarantee that all Handspring products for all time will have a Springboard slot." Some time after that we saw the release of the Visor Edge with an adapter for Springboards. On March 15 of this year, Handspring even kicked off "module madness" with instant rebates on Springboard modules. However, on June 3, PalmPower Magazine reported on a News.com article stating that Handspring is scrapping its proprietary Springboard technology in favor of the same Secure Digital technology in use in Palm computers.
Back in 1999 HandEra (formerly know as TRG) released the TRG Pro, a Palm OS device with the same form factor as the Palm III series, but with a CF (Compact Flash) slot. The TRG Pro was a very good handheld, but CF never became the standard in Palm OS machines.
The other expansion system that became very popular among Palm OS users was the Memory Stick from Sony. All Sony Clie handhelds are equipped with a Memory Stick slot for data storage, or to connect Memory Stick-based accessories like digital cameras. Memory Sticks are as popular and important to the Clie users as the Springboards are to the Visor users.
And what about Palm? At that time, Palm, Inc. didn’t have a single handheld with an expansion card slot. The only possibility was the axxPAC from a German company called AMS (at http://www.ams-fl.com/axxpac/e_index.html). The incredible accessory could create a Smart Media slot on Palm IIIe and Palm IIIx handhelds, but Palm itself didn’t have any handhelds with expansion cards. The arrival of the Palm m100 and Palm m500 series would finally change that.
The Palm m100 and m105 were nothing more than the Palm IIIe and Palm IIIxe with a new shape: no flash memory, same serial connector, 2MB and 8MB of RAM, and some new applications like the Note Pad. After that, all new Palm handhelds would be equipped with the Universal Connector and an expansion slot. Palm chose the SD/MMC (Secure Digital/Mulitmedia Card) open standard, and just like what happened to Handspring during the release of their Springboard system, a lot of specialists and analysts started questioning Palm’s decision.
Why didn’t Palm adopt Springboard or even Memory Stick standards? It would be much better for the Palm Economy and Palm OS users, according to some analysts. In my opinion, Palm was right from the very beginning.
Although present in all new Palm handhelds, the SD/MMC open standard didn’t become popular just because of Palm’s decision. In fact, other handheld makers are now adopting the same standard. In addition to Handspring who has added an SD slot to their Treos, HandEra’s new HandEra 330 has both CF and SD/MMC slots. It looks like the MultiMediaCard Association (at http://www.mmca.org) is doing a very good job of promoting the MMC standard itself.
This new standard is getting more and more popular among Pocket PC users as well. Every single new Pocket PC model has a SD/MMC slot. Kodak digital cameras also adopted it. Ericson MP3 accessories for cell phones are compatible with SD/MMC cards. Even the new Dana from AlphaSmart has SD slots. The SD/MMC standard may even help bring about what once seemed unimaginable: it may help the seamless exchange of data between Palm OS and Pocket PC handhelds.
But the most important move came from the company that first popularized the expansion slots for PDAs. Handspring recently released the Treo 90, which has the same form factor as the Treo 180 and Treo 270 series but doesn’t have wireless capability. However, the Treo 90 is the first handheld from Handspring to be equipped with a SD/MMC slot. This just may be the starting point of a new battle. Not between Palm and Microsoft, but between the makers of the Palm OS and the makers of Palm OS-based handhelds.
It’s becoming clear that the SD/MMC cards are now the de facto standard for handhelds, no matter what the operating system. And it’s also clear that other companies are adopting the SD/MMC to make the exchange of data between all sorts of equipment possible. But there’s one thing missing from this strategy. In fact, there’s a company missing. Sony is a giant in the consumer electronic market, and Memory Stick slots are spread all over Sony equipment, from digital cameras to notebooks, from digital portraits to handhelds. And we cannot forget that Sony is also licensing the Memory Stick technology. Acer, for example, has adopted the Memory Stick in both its Palm OS and Pocket PC handhelds.
It’s going to be a tough battle. Some say SD/MMC is one step ahead of the Memory Stick because it’s an open standard and because it has been adopted by a lot of companies, but I wouldn’t be so confident. The Memory Stick is ahead of SD/MMC in some files. The ability to support card-based accessories is very common on the Memory Stick side. On the SD/MMC side, most of the devices (including the Treo 90 and iPaq 3800 series) are not SDIO compatible; in other words, they only support data storage. And as for those that consider the Memory Stick physically too big, Sony has an answer for that in the Memory Stick Duo (at http://www.memorystick.org/msinfo/eng/ms/duo.html). Smaller then a SD/MMC card, the Memory Stick Duo can even be used in the old Memory Stick slots with an adapter.
The SDIO capability, present in all Palm OS handhelds with the SD/MMC slot, is very important. Without the SDIO, the SD/MMC slots are useless for any kind of card-based accessories like the recently released Presenter-to-Go for Palm OS machines (at http://www.presenter-to-go.com). In the future, when all the SD/MMC based machines start being released with the SDIO capability (especially the Pocket PC devices), it will finally be possible to imagine the CF standard to be retired. When Sony releases the Memory Stick Duo, the company will have a media card similar in size to the SD/MMC cards. From this point on, we’ll probably be facing the only two possible media card standards of the near future: the Memory Stick and the SD/MMC.
I don’t anticipate manufactures of handhelds and consumer electronic devices based on the SD/MMC migrating to the Memory Stick standard. I think it’s clear to all of us that Sony will not change its entire line of products that are based on the Memory Stick media cards and migrate to the SD/MMC.
We are, however, starting to see several companies already releasing CF-to-Memory Stick and SD/MMC adapters as well as Springboard-to-SD/MMC and Memory Stick adapters. It is very hard to say which one of these two standards will be the winner of this battle. Maybe it’ll be both of them. If you’re thinking of buying new devices, handhelds, accessories, and whatnot, my advice is to try to stick with one of these two standards from now on.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on axxPAC from AMS, visit http://www.ams-fl.com/axxpac/e_index.html.
For more information on the MultiMediaCard Association, visit http://www.mmca.org.
For more information on Memory Stick Duo, visit http://www.memorystick.org/msinfo/eng/ms/duo.html.
For more information on Presenter-to-Go, visit http://www.presenter-to-go.com.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
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.END_SIDEBAR
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