Wireless company Bsquare Corp. announced it has stopped manufacturing its Power Handheld hardware device and restructured its Power Handheld business unit to focus solely on selling the enabling software that ran on the device to smart device makers.
“Bsquare is exiting the business of manufacturing and marketing our own device,” said Brian Crowley, president and chief executive officer. “We will leave that business to original equipment manufacturers, and we will focus on what we do best. This decision also removes the friction that has existed wherein we were competing with some of our own OEM customers.”
“There is clearly a market opportunity for converged devices, however, we sold a relatively small number of units, and the ongoing investment didn’t make sense at the expense of our core business,” said Crowley.
The company explored strategic alternatives for the business, like a sale or spinout alternative, but found no viable options. For now, Bsquare will retain intellectual property related to the device.
In 2002, Bsquare Corp. released a reference design for a wireless PDA based on Intel Corp.’s chips and Microsoft Corp.’s operating system. The company said it was working to sell the design and support systems to corporate users and was teaming with manufacturers to build the device. It then planned to collect royalties on each device sold.
Industry watchers had questioned the viability of Bsquare’s plan based on the already highly competitive mobile handset market.
