Palmtop Maker Vies For Corporate Acceptance

Handspring Inc. has signed a pair of agreements that it hopes will raise the profile of its palmtops with businesses. First, distributor Ingram Micro Inc. will start carrying Handspring hardware. In a second deal, Handspring will license encryption software from Certicom Corp.

Not only can distribution through corporate-reselling stalwart Ingram Micro get Handspring Visor PDAs and Springboard expansion modules greater corporate visibility, Ingram's resellers will bundle the PDAs with software and hardware such as bar-code scanners and keyboards. Ingram also will manage orders and returns for Handspring, says Darren Thierry, the company's director of enterprise sales. "Handling operational things can become burdensome for a company of our size," he says.

In the second agreement, Handspring is joining Motorola Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp. in licensing Certicom's SSL Plus security software, which offers security in situations in which bandwidth is constrained. Certicom's security components will be integrated into Handspring's Blazer browser. Customers should be able to download the Web browser with the security patch from Handspring's Web site by the end of April.