Psion: The Rise & Fall of a Visionary Pocket Computer

Today billions of people all around the world carry around pocket-sized computers called smartphones, it is hard to imagine a world without smartphones, odds are you watching this video on a smartphone, but while the first smartphone is widely considered to be the IBM Simon the idea of a pocket computer was first conceptualized about a decade earlier not in Silicon Valley but in the United Kingdom, Psion was the first company in the world to release a handheld computer, while most technology companies at the time were caught up in the home computer wars, Psion was thinking a step further instead of having a computer in every home why not have a computer with you always in your pocket, Psion PDAs were truly ahead of their time. At its height, Psion was massively successful having been a part of the FTSE 100 which is a stock index of the 100 most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange. Despite all this success, they never managed to reach the notoriety or success of the Palm PDA and Apple Newton despite being released years prior. So what happened to Psion?

In October 1984 it launched the world’s first volume-produced handheld PDA called the Psion Organizer, it resembled a pocket calculator and featured an AlphaNumeric Keyboard. Psion released the next generation of the Organizer in 1986, the Organizer II introduced many hardware improvements, like a better keyboard and display. The machine was so sophisticated that the UK Government purchased 3 000 of these devices for use in benefit calculations by the Employment Services department. More than 500 000 Organizer IIs were made, and it was truly instrumental in popularizing the idea of handheld computers amongst professionals and business people. its sales were more than £10 million. in The following year of 1987, Potter listed the company on the London stock exchange.

In 1989 after conducting marketing research, Psion saw an opportunity to create a line of computers that were a hybrid of a handheld computer and a home computer. This hybrid was a portable computer or as we know it today a laptop. The line of computers was called Mobile Computers or MC for short and between 1989 and 1991 four versions of these computers were released. But the MC line failed to get any traction, overall it was well designed, it had an amazing screen, and was genuinely lightweight and easy to carry around but users complained about how basic it was, its word processor was inferior to Microsoft Word and it didn’t launch with a readily available software development kit. But ultimately the MC was unable to compete against the rise of IBM PC-compatible computers and thus Psion quickly ended its production of the line just 2 years after it was launched.

Meanwhile, the company’s handheld computer sales were being hammered by a wave of new competitors, as giant companies such as Sharp and Canon began to dominate the handheld computer market. Industry observers were wondering how long Psion would be able to last in the increasingly competitive technology market. The company was struggling, and by 1991 had slipped into losses.

Contributing greatly to the overall success of the series 3 line which sold more than 1.5 million units in its lifetime. Despite all this success Psion failed to enter the U.S. market. By 1994, the company’s sales had topped £100 million but almost all of it came from the European market, especially its core U.K. market. Despite holding what many considered to be superior technology, Psion lacked the marketing muscle to compete in the United States, particularly against the growing number of PDAs and their handwriting recognition technology. Yet in the United Kingdom at least, the Series 3 remained Psion’s true star in the first half of the 1990s, driving its sales up to £124 million by 1996. Other versions of the Series 3 were released until its discontinuation in 1998.

In 1997 Psion would release the Series 5

initially, Psion released the netbook in 1999 as a subnotebook targeted at the mobile enterprise market, but the netbook failed to gain any traction and was discontinued shortly after its launch. The Psion Series 7 was based on the netbook and was released in 2000. In size, it was fairly original: larger than a handheld machine, but smaller than a laptop computer. It was the first and last of the Psion series to have a full-color electronic visual display andIt had 16MB of ram. The Series 7 much like the netbook failed to get any traction. At the time better PDAs like the Palm had entered the market and were overshadowing Psion handheld devices.