CONCORD, Massachusetts, April 2002- Leading provider of handheld mobility solutions, Palm, Inc. has hired the Gantry Group to design and conduct a side-by-side comparison of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise deployments of its branded handheld devices with Microsoft’s Pocket PC. Palm is interested in an objective analysis that will validate and quantify the company’s ease-of-use advantage against Pocket PC.
The Gantry Group study will consist of 40 one-on-one interviews with IT management at 40 different enterprise deployments of handheld devices – split evenly between Palm and Pocket PC implementations. The core of the study will be the development of a realistic, detailed TCO model that accurately reflects the cost drivers associated with an enterprise-wide deployment of handheld devices including installation, support, software distribution, and lifetime adjusted capital investment for the units, software and accessories. Gantry Group’s methodology calls for development and testing of the TCO calculator and will result in a white paper on the study, which will be available on Palm’s and Gantry Groups websites, respectively.
Recognizing the need to objectively determine whether Palm Powered handheld devices have a real TCO advantage over the Pocket PC, Palm hired Gantry Group as an independent third party to conduct definitive research that will provide quantitative evidence – one way or the other. Gantry Group expects to complete the project in a two-month period, with results available in June 2002.
About Gantry Group
The Gantry Group is a strategic advisory firm that uses primary market research to help companies cost-effectively accelerate the successful market adoption of their products and services -- online and offline. Through Gantry Group’s market intelligence, market research, and ROI/TCO benchmarking service suites, more than 165 client companies have identified, positioned and quantified their value within the marketplace. Additional information about Gantry Group can be found at www.gantrygroup.com.
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