Sony has announced plans to license Symbian's EPOC OS for their next generation advanced 3G smartphone products expected to be released in early 2001. These new smartphones will also use technology from Texas Instruments called "OMAP processor." Sony did reportedly also announce plans to continue to work with Palm and Microsoft on a variety of previously announced initiatives.

Red Herring is reporting that Centura's new "eSNAPP 2.0" information appliance will come with capabilities that enable it to support enterprise data-sharing with Palm OS based devices.

Internet Week has published an online article by Gayle Ehrenman entitled "Handheld Apps For the Enterprise: Cut Your Data Down To Size" that includes pointers to how companies like Oracle, FEDEX, and Sabre plan to use handhelds in the near future.

Franklin continues to offer single and multifunctional information handheld devices like: "Spelling Ace with Thesaurus" and "Bookman Products" that can be augmented with Book Cards that offer: foreign language specific dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, and special interest books. In the future these Bookman cards will be readable on desktop PCs, and users can even create their own Bookman downloads.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com) eFax: 978-246-3067