Handspring Targets Enterprise, Small & Medium Businesses With New Plans

/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Handspring, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAND), a leading innovator in personal communications and handheld computing products and services, today announced sales, marketing and distribution programs targeted towards enterprise and small to medium business customers. The company is responding to increased interest from the corporate sector in the Treo family of products due to the great voice and data experience combined with a breadth of productivity applications like email, sales-force automation, customer relationship management as well as development and inventory tools. Treo is a compact, wireless communicator that integrates a mobile phone, wireless applications like email and Internet browsing, and a 16MB Palm OS organizer all in one.

Plans for expanded sales, marketing and distribution programs include increasing the company's enterprise sales force, establishing training programs for key partners and extending the distribution network. Through an arrangement with MarketLink, Handspring is dramatically increasing its enterprise sales team from its core staff to a true nation-wide sales force. The new representatives will work together with distributors, value-added resellers, enterprise solutions partners and carrier sales teams from Cingular and Sprint to sell the Treo family of products to prospective customers. MarketLink provides full-service, multi-channel, professional outsource sales and marketing for manufacturers of computer-related products.

Handspring has also expanded distribution with CDW-G, the government sales arm of CDW Computer Centers, Inc., (NASDAQ:CDWC) a leading provider of multi- brand products and services and Global Wireless Data (GWD), one of the largest single source value-added stocking distributors of wireless data communication products and integration services to channel partners, software developers, systems integrators and value-added resellers. As a National Master Agent for major US wireless operators, Handspring expects GWD to be a key partner in deploying Treo communicators to customers on the Sprint and VoiceStream networks.

Increased marketing activities include a series of training initiatives around the benefits and capabilities of mobile voice and data products and participation in key industry events targeted at IT managers and corporate decision makers.

"Handheld computing and mobile communications devices are now viewed as important productivity tools for large enterprises and small to medium sized businesses," said Kendall Fargo, vice president of enterprise sales for Handspring. "Handspring has always focused on vertical markets like healthcare, logistics and education; now we are starting to see traction with businesses looking to extend existing enterprise solutions beyond the desktop environment. This trend has been accelerated by the emergence of integrated wireless products like the Treo and the development of higher-speed wireless networks."

A selection of enterprise/SMB customers include; DePaul University, Paramount Pictures, Sara Lee Bakery Group and St. Joseph Health System of Orange, CA. For more information on specific distributors and enterprise partners see Handspring's enterprise and government sites at http://www.handspring.com/enterprise and http://www.handspring.com/government.

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