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Motorola Solutions buys Psion for $200 million
Psion has mostly slipped out of the public eye, but that's about to change -- Motorola Solutions just bought the company for $200 million in cash to bolster its work with industrial companies. The deal will mostly focus on improving Motorola Solutions' toughened-up handhelds and in-car terminals. Not always exciting out of devices like the ET1, but it ends Psion's 32-year history as an independent company and a legacy that includes some of the very first PDAs, like the Psion Organizer. We won't miss the fight over the "netbook" name, mind you. Regardless of how you feel, you'll have until fall to wax nostalgic, as that's when the two sides expect the deal to close and the Psion name gets subsumed into that of another mobile pioneer.
Psion responds to "netbook" challengers, says it does so still sell the NetBook Pro
Well, it looks like the dust up between Psion and those using the "netbook" name to describe, um, netbooks, isn't showing any signs of going away anytime soon, with Psion now responding to Intel and Dell's latest charges by saying that, contrary to their claims, it does indeed still sell its NetBook Pro. According to jkOnTheRun, while Psion says it "can understand why people might have assumed that sales ceased a while back," it does in fact still sell the device, with the bulk of its sales being in the "highly specialized supply chain logistics area." As Psion points out, that continuation of sales is key to its argument to keep the trademark from becoming abandoned, and it says it has "all the invoices to prove multi-million dollar sales in the US in 2006 and sales that continue even to this day," adding that, "just because we're not selling tens of thousands through Best Buy doesn't mean we're not entitled to our trademark." That said, we're still a long ways from folks being forced to pay up or stop using the netbook name, although it's at least becoming clear that Psion isn't about to just let this one slide.
