Palm Plans to Unveil New Hand-helds, Price Cuts

Palm Inc., the No. 1 maker of electronic organizers, plans to unveil today a $149 organizer called the m100 with interchangeable colored faceplates to compete with Handspring Inc.

Palm also is introducing a version of its Palm VII, which has wireless Internet access, with four times more memory and more Web sites. The Palm VIIx will cost $449, and the company is cutting the original Palm VII by $50 to $399. It reduced the color IIIc by $50 to $399. Prices of its other models won’t change.

These are the first new products from Palm since 3Com Corp., a maker of computer-networking equipment, completed its spinoff of the organizer company 11 days ago. Handspring, formed by the people behind the original PalmPilot, has been taking market share from Palm with its multicolored $249 Visor, while Sony Corp. plans to ship its own hand-held organizers this year.

Sony and Handspring license Palm’s operating-system software for their devices.

In May, Handspring’s share of the U.S. retail electronic-organizer market was 31%, compared with 57% for Palm and 4% for Hewlett-Packard Co.’s new PocketPC, according to market researcher PC Data of Reston, Va.

Palm shares closed Friday at $38.94, up $1.56, on Nasdaq.

Five faceplates will sell for about $20 apiece, in silver, red, light green and two shades of blue.