(bad) News From Sharp

[matthis]

Dear Zaurus community,

I am currently looking for a job in Japan, and this morning went to Sharp's job fair.
I was talking with one of the person responsible for the development of products like the zaurus, the electronic dictionaries etc...
Between talks about what his job consisted in, the atmosphere at Sharp etc... I asked him what they were planning to do with the Z. His answer was that their efforts with this type of device where now completely switched towards mobile-phones, and mobile phone-pda hybrids (like the em-one), and that the zaurus will be phased out by April.

Not that this really matters to our community always vibrant with new projects! But I wouldn't be waiting for something new  

[pelrun]

We've known Sharp has been completely disinterested in the Z for a couple of years now; people either stopped holding their breath long ago or they stopped needing to breathe

[ZDevil]

I'm not worried so much. I will just keep using my Z until an even nicer device appears.

[HoloVector]

Dear Zaurus community,

I am currently looking for a job in Japan, and this morning went to Sharp's job fair.
I was talking with one of the person responsible for the development of products like the zaurus, the electronic dictionaries etc...
Between talks about what his job consisted in, the atmosphere at Sharp etc... I asked him what they were planning to do with the Z. His answer was that their efforts with this type of device where now completely switched towards mobile-phones, and mobile phone-pda hybrids (like the em-one), and that the zaurus will be phased out by April.

Not that this really matters to our community always vibrant with new projects! But I wouldn't be waiting for something new  

From Sharp Minds come Sharp Products (that are marketed by Weak Minds)TM  

I'm not surprised to hear this based on the fact we've known since last year that Sharp was pulling the plug on the Zaurus.  What does surprise me is that they are not going to chase after the lucrative eeePC plus clones market with an updated Zaurus variant with an updated OS, a higher res screen, more memory and built-in wireless comms like WiMax or whatever.  Oh well they will probably figure that out just before the bottom falls out of that market which pretty much their SOP.  

They did the same with the Sharp PC-3000 series, the Zaurus SL series, etc...

For multi-billion dollar company they sure have a rotten track record!