Sony Drops Development Support For Clie

just fiddling around writes "In a terse notice on their developer website, Sony electronics has announced that developer support for the Clie line of handhelds will be terminated on December 31st, 2004. This follows the June 2004 decision to suspend new Clie product development for the US and Europe while Sony 'reassesses the direction of the conventional PDA market.' Meanwhile, already subscribed developers can still access the developer resources provided by Sony. According to the PalmInfoCenter story Sony has pledged to 'continue the same level of service and support for Clie handheld users and to honor all existing limited warranties. The current Clie lineup is contining to be sold and supported while supplies last.'"

And then Steve Jobs steps up to the microphone

[JPyObjC Dude]

Maybe Sony execs got wind of one of Steve's planned versions of the iPod :]

Use Firefox or die! [mozilla.org]

Discount specials?

[AndroidCat]

The last versions [palminfocenter.com] don't seem too bad (not that I've tried PDAs). I wonder how cheap they'll be discounted before they disappear?

Maybe Macromedia will finally...

[xanderwilson]

... put a Flash Player on other Palm-Powered products. Other than an exclusive deal with Sony or something, I can't imagine why they can have a Flash Player on CLIEs, but on no other Palms.

Alex.

a company on the way down

[Pivot]

They kill the "coolest" product line of theirs. They insist on using atrac in their media players. They insist on using memory stick troughout their entire range of products.

The only good thing left with this company is playstation 2 and the sonyericsson brand. I wonder if they are able to screw up these two as well.

Re:a company on the way down

[dave420]

The Clie wasn't cool - it looked silly. Sony, regarded world-wide as home of the technologically superior, using Palm OS on a PDA. It never looked cool - all the apps were kludges to be windows-compatible. The Clies were bulky and poorly designed. I'm kinda glad to see them go - I just wish Sony released a PocketPC-based PDA - that would be much better.