this is amazingly good news. So why did Sharp say they were stopping production?
Normally these things are kept a secret otherwise they might not be able to sell remaining stock, either
- because people don't want to buy an obsolete product (Sony are v bad at this, they left left owners of Palm/Clie home and dry),
or
- there's a new product coming and noone buys an old model
In this case no new model came and they carried on production. It's unlikely that Sharp would have tested the water to see if there'd be a clamour to continue making them (as they don't appear to pay heed to users), as that's a high risk strategy. It could be that they were taken aback to find demand increased because people sitting on the fence waiting for the next model decided to get in a last-chance buy. After all, whilst the Z is flawed (sorry, but it is!), it has less flaws than any other current PDA.
Another possibility is that the new em-one has been delayed into production, or isn't a big seller or other problem and they have spare capacity so decided to make more Zs.
Maybe they were intending to launch a new Z model but there were problems with supply of parts (e.g. the "new" 20GB microdrives simply haven't appeared on the market).
Sadly, speculation apart, I suspect we'll never really know the full story of the zaurus strategy (there might not even be one, it often strikes me more as a drunk random walk through handheld technology!).