Tapwave Responds to Reports of the End of the Zodiac

Last week, Byron Connell, Tapwave's Senior VP of Marketing, gave a statement to Tapland about his company's future.

In it, Mr. Connell talked about a new focus for the company and its plans for the Palm OS-based Zodiac line.

The most controversial statement he said was "Tapwave is starting to transition from offering Tapwave branded retail products to developing new co-branded products for OEM partners."

In response, Brighthand asked Mr. Connell, "Most people are interpreting this to mean that you are phasing out the Zodiac line and will only be making products for other companies. Is this correct?"

Mr. Connell responded by saying:

Looks like people are reading a bit much into my comments. To recap:

- Tapwave is "starting" to change its business model. Basically without huge funding it makes more sense for us to leverage other companies brands, advertising, mass retail distribution, geographic expertise, etc. and be more of a technology provider of complete mobile entertainment systems. Future products will be tailored for OEM customers.

- We are using our "current" technology and next generation technology to co-brand and focus on OEM partner needs. We already have an established OEM relationship in South Korea and just signed a second with one of the largest public companies in China. Our Asian connections are quite strong through our CEO and current investors - this is huge asset for the company. I expect quite a few more in the future - particularly for our next generation technology.

- The current models and current technology will be in use for quite some time (in both its current form and in derivative forms). We will continue to support and develop for it as needed for OEM customers and our installed base. We are starting to transition out of retail...this is pretty different than executing an EOL plan or true "Phase out"...but it may be a bit confusing for some customers since it is not a typical life-cycle management strategy.

What's Happening Soon

No matter how some people interpret Mr. Connell's comments, it's clear that Tapwave isn't abandoning the Zodiac line any time soon.

This company is close to releasing a new driver for SanDisk's Wi-Fi cards. The upcoming version will offer more reliability than the current one, as well as support for SanDisk's regular Wi-Fi card and the one with 256 MB of storage.

In addition, Tapwave is working on a new Web browser for the Zodiac and a new API to allow for hardware decoding of MPEG4 video.

A Bit of History

In 2003, Tapwave released the Zodiac line, a pair of Palm OS-based handhelds focused on games.

Unfortunately for this company, even before these handhelds hit the market, Sony announced that it was going to release the Playstation Portable (PSP). This meant that the Zodiac line had only a year or so to build up a significant percentage of the potential Mobile Gaming market before Sony came in.

And even before the Playstation portable came out, Nintendo released the Gameboy DS. This company has long been the leader in portable gaming consoles, and it might even have been a bigger competitor for the Zodiac than the PSP has been.

Currently, it's obvious that although the Zodiac line has caught on with many people, it was never a big player in the handheld market.

More about the Zodiac Series

Both versions of Tapwave Zodiac run Palm OS 5.2 on a 200 MHz Motorola .MX1 ARM-based processor.

The Zodiac series' 320-by-480 pixel screen offers both portrait and landscape modes. This transflective display is 3.8 inches when measured diagonally and offers 16-bit color. Both models have an ATI Imageon graphics accelerator and use the the Fathammer X-Forge 3D Game Engine.

Obviously, the main focus of these handhelds is playing games, and they come bundled with two: Stunt Car Extreme and Acid Solitaire.

To allow users to play games head-to-head, the Zodiac series includes Bluetooth short-range wireless networking. Bluetooth can also be used to wirelessly connect these handhelds to a mobile phone for Internet access.

The Zodiac series sports two SD slots, one of which supports SDIO. A Wi-Fi SD card is now available for the Zodiac series.

Related Links

• Brighthand Reviews the Tapwave Zodiac
• Tapwave Drops Zodiac Prices
• Brighthand Reviews Astraware's Mazera