Handspring Pushes Into Enterprise

Handspring Inc. continued its attempts to chip away at Palm’s market share by entering into a distribution deal that it hopes will strengthen its attempts to sell into the enterprise.

Specifically, the handheld vendor entered into a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro. The deal will help Handspring develop a system of value-added resellers (VARs) who can focus on selling Handspring devices and Springboard add-on modules into the corporate market, the company said in a statement.

“We are seeing great demand for our products in corporate America,” said Greg Woock, Handspring’s vice president of North American sales. “we plan to bring on a targeted and proven set of reseller partners that enable us to better serve the needs of these (corporate) customers.”

Handspring started selling its devices over the Internet in the fall of 1999 and entered the retail channel last spring. It has gained almost 20 percent of sales of all handhelds in that time. The company’s products initially competed with the Palm III series of low-priced handhelds in the consumer space, but its recently-announced Visor Edge competes with the highly-successful Palm V line.