Psion share prices have been yo-yoing today first upwards with the spreading of rumours that Palm may be in the market to make a bid for Psion, then back down with the announcement that Motorola is to discontinue its joint Wireless Information Devices development undertaking with Psion.
The markets have not reacted kindly to the Motorola news, pushing Psion shares down, although they had rallied by midday to reach 220.25p, up 3.4 percent on the day.
Motorola goes own way with Symbian
Motorola has announced that it will refocus its own efforts in developing a “multifunctional mobile Smartphone to be launched in 2002 based on the Symbian platform”. As Motorola forms part of the Symbian joint-venture company, of which Psion is the largest shareholder, the news could be seen as worrying, although Motorola has stated that the news “will not affect other collaborative programmes between Motorola and Psion”.
Psion is to continue with the development of the first product that was to stem from the joint programme – what it terms a “Communicator product based on Symbian’s Quartz platform” – but the fact that the company is referring to “evaluating a range of options for its completion inthe light of the significant additional development cost” may not augur so well.
CodeWarrior
Better news comes with the announcement of a deal with Metrowerks to develop a full set of CodeWarrior software development tools for Symbian. CodeWarrior allows developers and programmers to build applications in both Java and C++ from a single development environment, with the deal having been penned to extend the number and type of applications available on Symbian devices, in line with other recent agreements.
