Sharp Corp, which makes Zaurus handheld computers, will release a new mobile device that will play digital music and videos by the end of March in Japan in an effort to revive sales.
Osaka-based Sharp already sells handheld computers that allow users to listen to music and watch video clips in addition to managing schedules and other data. The new device will "focus on audio-visual functions," Hiroshi Uno, Sharp's mobile systems division general manager, said.
Sharp is trying to increase sales with new products after it cut its handheld computer sales forecast for the year ending March by three-fourths to ?7 billion (US$57 million) because of falling prices and competition with mobile phones. The new device will probably face stiff competition from other portable gadgets with similar functions, analysts said.
"It'll be difficult to expand sales," said Yutaka Odawara, an assistant manager at Fuji Chimera Research Institute, Inc.
Consumers may instead opt for portable digital video disk, or DVD, players, he said.
Charges for downloading music and video from the Internet may also deter buyers, Odawara said.
Sharp is expanding its targeted consumers to teenagers and housewives, Uno said.
The new palmtop device may be compared with Apple Computer Inc's iPod digital music player, he said, declining to give the new product's price or other details.
Apple, the maker of the iMac computer, on Nov. 10 began selling the deck-of-cards-sized device, which can store as many as 1,000 songs stored in the digital MP3 format.
Sharp, whose handheld computers sold in Japan run on its proprietary Zaurus operating system, plans to triple annual sales of handheld devices to 1 million next year, Uno said.
Half will probably be sold overseas, where they run on the Linux operating system, he said.
In the US, Sharp began selling Linux-OS handheld computers with multimedia functions earlier this month. The silver metal device, which also runs games and other programs written in the Java computer programming language, is sold for US$399 on the Internet.
More than 10,000 Linux and Java software developers have registered to write programs for the multimedia device, Uno said.
By adding new programs, Sharp expects as much as 80 percent of its overseas handheld computer sales next year to come from the US.
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