Comment Articles

Psion's story makes a great Opera

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 11 Feb 2004 16:40 GMT

Let's pretend you're a computer company. No, no, come back: you're a good computer company -- they do exist. One that people respect and admire, and one that's had a measure of success. Furthermore, let's pretend that you've made your mark in a difficult field, creating software that directly competes with the big M and wins. You're at the heart of mobile devices from lots of different manufacturers, the critics love what you do and you're seen as a serious competitor in an environment with lots of room for growth. Now: what do you do next?

If you're Psion, you sell out. If you're Opera, you float. Two companies, both with a track record of surviving the hard times and prospering during the good, both with a major stake in the mobile market -- but one is upping the ante and the other has thrown in its hand. Such dramatic divergence may seem paradoxical, but like all good paradoxes it has much to teach us. It highlights the dangers of simplistic thinking: both companies have really made the same decision.

Of the two companies, Psion is by far the more complex. Born as a software company at the same time as the home computer, it learned the hard way that relying on hardware over which you had no control was a way of making yourself a hostage to someone else's fortune: its 1983 Xchange software suite was the Microsoft Office of its day, but the Sinclair QL on which it ran was closer to David Brent's. However, the close relationship with Sir Clive had given the company a taste for innovative hardware, and chip technology was just at the stage where handheld computers could do useful things. After many experiments of varying success the company hit upon the Series 3, a clamshell personal organiser that was streets ahead of anything else in the world. Moreover, and this is no given in this game, it sold accordingly. Lesson one: do it yourself.