Is there a new CXXX coming soon?

[Zuber]

Have no facts what so ever  

I'm not saying Sharp Japan don't run the show...

But I assume that they are in business to make money. Hence if Sharp USA etc. managed to do a half decent job in terms of promoting the PDA products and in convincing Sharp Japan that it was worth while (profitable). Then I can't see any reason why Sharp Japan would turn round and say no.

For the same reason that they don't say no to the million other Sharp products that sell in the rest of the world.

Maybe it does not work like that. Who knows. But Sharp do sell plenty of high tech products around the world. So I can't think of an obvious reason whey would make a big fuss over not bringing PDAs to non Japanese markets. In technical terms there is virtually nothig for them to do.

[nathanwms]

In technical terms there is virtually nothig for them to do.

 I agree with your statement; however, because the linux handheld market is so small worldwide, it may not be cost effective after they look at worldwide support of various languages and a worldwide advertising budget.
  Those members of this forum living in Japan seem to indicate that the Z clamshell is doing very well there.  I believe the Z clamshell will continue to be marketed in Japan and thus we will be able to get the latest and greatest for quite some time (thru the importers or directly of course).
  I think Sharp will continue to make handhelds as long as sales are strong in Japan.  Producing handhelds is both a good test bed and advertising for their small screen technology, which is where they really want to make their money.

[roderickv]

The problem is that Sharp works against itself. While the Sharp development team are trail blazers IMHO, the Sales and Marketing team (responsible for the US and European markets) are trend followers. When I think of them, inept comes to mind....

Sharp has consistantly misjudged the wants and needs of the US handheld market. You can go back to the orginal Sharp Zaurus SL-XXX series. It was an excellent unit with features way ahead of it's time, with a fanatical group of owners (much like us), with forums, webpages and support groups (because Sharp's support also sucked). SHARP chose to not share the SDK of that Zaurus and so no significant 3rd party software could be developed. As a result, sales of other palmtops and handhelds over took those of the Zaurus and it was discontinued.  Although Sharp compensated for that early SKD mistake by introducing Linux based open sourced machines (which was a nice move), they again got it wrong by not selling the the C-XXX series here and in Europe. They got it in their head that the US market would not want clam shell units, I guess because of the popularity of the Palm Pilots a few years back. Another example is the Sharp Mobilon, which was just a knee jerk reaction to the budding Windows CE market. Sharp would have been much better served to continue developing the exsisting devices (The Sharp Zaurus SL-XXX being one) which was already established and brand recognizable, Lord knows they had the talent, but instead chose to discontinue the Zaurus and jump on the CE band wagon with a CE machine of their own.

So I recognize Sharp for what they are - Great at hardware and development and terrible at sales, support and marketing. If they would just listen to some of the great suggestions they have had over the years from owner and the likes of forums like this one, they would have got it right a long time ago, the development talent is there!