Oracle was reportedly showing off Oracle8e Lite for Windows CE and PalmPilot devices at the recently held New York City Java Business Expo.

Hewlett-Packard is now selling their HP Jornada 920 (StrongARM based) Handheld Professional PC that weighs 2.5 pounds with a battery life of 10 hours in Hong Kong.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is reporting that even with the "economic instabilities" in Japan, they will still see over 1.61 million smart handheld devices units sold in the Japanese marketplace in 1998 (a 41.3% increase over last year).

Hewlett-Packard, Casio, and Everex have announced new agreements with On The Go Software to bundle On The Go Software's Quicken ExpensAble for Windows CE software with their respective palm-size PC devices.

JAWS Technologies has announced a new 4096-bit JAWS L5 encryption product for the Palm Pilot. The software will be sold via online stores in the near future for under US$20.

NewtBrick is reporting the release of a new version 1.5 of their Newton Portfolio Manager (investment tracker, US$20) that is now Euro compliant, will graph Variable Day Averages, and has automatic quote sorting.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)