Medion brings best-selling GPS PDA to UK

Make your way to Halfords

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 17th March 2004 10:55 GMT

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Reg Kit Watch Germany's Medion last year took 7.9 per cent of the European PDA market making it the territory's third largest vendor, behind PalmOne and HP, and ahead of Sony and Dell. Unlike many of its rivals, it started out with no market share at all.

Impressive as these statistics are - they come courtesy of market watcher IDC - they are doubly striking because Medion sells its PDAs exclusively through German grocer Aldi.

Until now, that is: its Pocket PC has come to the UK, and is now available through car accessory chain Halfords.

Medion focuses on a single PDA: a Pocket PC with a bundled GPS receiver. And it sells it very cheaply. Halfords is offering the product for just £400 including 17.5 per cent sales tax in the UK, well below comparable devices.

It's this focus on a single application - satellite navigation - low pricing and mass-market outlets that propelled Medion to a top three chart position in less than a year.

The Medion Satellite Navigation System (the MD7200 in Germany) is based on a 200MHz Intel XScale processor and runs Windows Mobile 2003. It contains 64MB of RAM - 36MB accessible to the user - and 32MB of Flash ROM. Medion bundles a 256MB MMC memory card. The unit weighs 120g and measures 12.3 x 7.7 x 1.2cm.

The Halfords version contains a full UK street map, with directions provided visually and through speech synthesis for motorists. A in-car power adaptor is supplied.

Euro PDA biz sees first growth since 2000

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