Psion

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"Psion" redirects here. For other uses, see Psion (disambiguation).

Psion PLC is a consumer hardware company which developed the Psion Organiser as well as a whole range of more advanced, clamshell-design Personal Digital Assistants. Psion today comprises one remaining operating division, the Canadian Psion Teklogix, having closed or disposed of all its previous operations. Although its actual operations are based in Canada, Psion itself is a British company.

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[edit] History

Psion was established in 1980 as a software house with a close relationship with Sinclair Research. The company developed games and other software for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers, released under the Sinclair brand. Its name means "Potter Scientific Investments." after the company's founder David Potter. The acronym PSI was already in use elsewhere in the world so ON was added to make the name PSION unique. David Potter remained and managing director until 1999 and currently is still chairman of the company. Psion's games for the ZX Spectrum included "Psion Chess", and Horace Goes Skiing.

In early 1983, Sinclair approached Psion regarding the development of a suite of office applications for the forthcoming Sinclair QL personal computer. Psion were already working on a project in this area and the QL was launched in 1984, bundled with Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel; respectively a word processor, database, spreadsheet and business graphics application. These were later ported to MS-DOS, collectively called PC-Four, or Xchange in an enhanced version.

1984 also marked Psion's first foray into hardware; the Psion Organiser, the world's first handheld computer, in appearance resembling early games machines. In 1986 the vastly improved Psion Organiser II was released, whose success led the company into a decade long period of "Psion" Computer and operating system development. It included a simple-to-use database programming language, OPL, which sparked a large independent software market. In 1987 Psion began development of its "SIBO" ("SIxteen Bit Organiser") family of devices and its own new multitasking operating system called EPOC to run its PDA products. It is often rumoured that EPOC stands for "Electronic Piece Of Cheese" however Colly Myers, (who served as CEO of Symbian until 2005), said in an interview that it stood for 'epoch' and nothing more. This development effort produced the Psion Series 3 (1993-1998) and the Psion MC-series laptops.

A second effort, dubbed Project Protea, produced the Series 5 Psion for sale in 1997, a completely new product from the 32-bit hardware upwards through the OS, UI, and applications. It is still remembered for its high quality, especially its keyboard which despite its size allowed for touch-typing. But the entirely new feel of the product, and the removal of certain familiar quirks, alienated the loyal Series 3 userbase - who tended to stick with their robust PDAs rather than upgrade. Psion was also challenged by the arrival of cheaper devices running Microsoft's Windows CE and the lower functionality approach of the Palm Pilot.

In 1989 Psion purchased Dacom, and rebranded the new business "Psion Dacom" (later rebranded to "Psion Connect"). This business focused on modems and connectivity products, in particular the Gold Card range of PC cards for laptops.

The 32-bit EPOC developed by Project Protea resulted in the eventual formation of Symbian Ltd. in June 1998 in conjunction with Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. The OS was renamed the Symbian Operating System and was envisioned as the base for a new range of smartphones. Psion gave 130 key staff to the new company and retained a 20-30% shareholding in the spun-out business. The Symbian operating system as of 2007 powers around 125 million mobile phones such as the Sony Ericsson P900 series.

The development of new and updated products by Psion slowed after the Symbian spin-off. The upgraded Series 5 took two years to arrive and it was not until 2001 that the colour Series 5[citation needed] was ready. Other products failed or had limited success - a Psion Siemens' GSM device, a Series 5 based STB, the Wavefinder DAB radio, an attempt to add Dragon's speech recognition software to a PDA, Ericsson cancelled a Series 5MX derived smartphone project in 2001.

Psion had sold its sole manufacturing plant in 1999 and started to withdraw from its PDA markets in late 2001, shedding 250 of 1,200 staff and writing-off £40 million. The PDA, which was once a niche market, had become a global horizontal marketplace where it was difficult for Psion to compete. The final blow for Psion's Organiser and PDA business came in January 2001 when Motorola pulled out of a joint project with Psion, Samsung, and Parthus, to create "Odin", an ARM-based PDA-phone.

In 2000 Psion acquired Teklogix (Canada) for £240 million, and merged its business-to-business division, Psion Enterprise, with the newly acquired company. Teklogix was re-branded PsionTeklogix. This division now forms the core of Psion Plc's business.

In 2002 Psion created a new division called Psion Software. This business developed push email solutions for Symbian smartphones, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. This business was sold to Visto (USA) in 2003.

In 2004, Psion announced its intention to dispose of the company's remaining Symbian shareholding to Nokia, as they no longer regarded it as a core part of their strategy. Although opposed by many shareholders, the large shareholding of the founder, David Potter, ensured the vote was carried.

Having closed or disposed of all its previous operations, Psion today comprises one operating division, Psion Teklogix.

[edit] Psion and Linux

Psion PLC had a lengthy, but distant, interest in Linux as an operating system on its electronic devices. In 1998, it supported the Linux7K project that had been initiated by Ed Bailey at Red Hat, which was to port Linux to its Series 5 personal computer.[1][2][3] The project was named after the Cirrus Logic PS-7110 chip of the Series 5. Although this project was one of the earliest attempts to port Linux to a handheld computer,[4] it did not come to fruition for Psion. The project soon transitioned to an informal open source project at Calcaria.net that kept the name Linux7K. After the project transitioned again to sourceforge.net, the project's name was changed to a more general name "PsiLinux", and more recently to "OpenPsion". The project has developed Linux kernels and filesystems for the Revo, Series 5 and 5MX, and Series 7 and netBook.

In 2003-2004, Psion and its founder David Potter expressed interest in Linux as the operating system for its devices as it divested from Symbian.[5][6][7] However, the only result of that interest was Linux as the operating system on a limited number of custom NetBook Pro's designed for a hospital setting.[8]

[edit] PDAs

All these PDAs except the Psion netpad have a small keyboard, which in all but the Organiser's case is of the standard QWERTY layout, or regional variation thereof.

[edit] Laptops

  • Psion MC 200
  • Psion MC 400
  • Psion MC 400 WORD
  • Psion MC 600 (DOS)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jones, Marc Ambasna. "Opinion: Mobile Linux for Bluetooth - spanner for Microsoft?", ZDNet, ZDNet UK, May 11, 1999. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  2. ^ Jones, Marc Ambasna. "Mobile Linux for Psion pressures Win CE", ZDNet, ZDNet UK, April 23, 1999. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  3. ^ Almesberger, Werner. "Linux in the pocket - The Linux-7k project", Linux Symposium, Ottawa (abstract), 1999. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  4. ^ Maddox, Paul. "Linux for handhelds: fact or fiction?", Wireless Developer Network (Linux Today), May 4, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  5. ^ Kewney, Guy. "Psion looks past Windows to Linux as Nokia buys Symbian", newswireless.net, newswireless.net, February 9, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  6. ^ Partridge, Chris. "Psion prepares the way for the one true OS", vunet.com, July 8, 2003. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  7. ^ Kewney, Guy. "What Will Become the Next Scion of Psion?", eWeek, Ziff Davis Media Inc, February 2004. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 
  8. ^ Glover, Tony. "NHS deal with Psion heralds move away from Windows", The Business Online, May 23, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-06-17. 

[edit] External links

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