The Palmtop marketplace is providing new opportunities for creative engineers throughout the world. Interestingly enough, it is the smaller companies coming out with most of the exciting, new hardware and software for the HP Palmtop.
Perhaps it's easy to understand. Larger, more established software companies already have their resources stretched to the limit. They must decide whether to write their applications for DOS, Windows, OS/2, or Unix. To allocate further resources to modify their software to run under the 95LX's sparsely documented HP/Lotus System Manager may be low on their priority list. That leaves a vacuum for smaller companies to fill, and a platform for them to express their creativity.
The small software developer, even without access to Lotus/HP System Manager specifications, is already coming up with many ingenious applications for the 95LX. Take a look at the four products we review in our lead story and you'll see some prime examples of this.
Also expect to find many new hardware products supporting the 95LX. Hardware development has always led software development, and this is especially the case with the 95LX, given its new System Manager software platform.
Analysts agree that the palmtop market will be huge. The 95LX is the first really successful palmtop, and the way third-party developers contribute to, and profit from this success warrants close and careful scrutiny by the computer industry.