According to the CIOL.com web site "HP's quiet exit from the handheld arena has left the market virtually without competition, especially when this business was slowly trying to look up in India. As a result, players like Toshiba and Palm are all set to fill that void and are expected to create a monopolistic business.
Post-merger HP India has decided to go dormant on its once-popular iPaq range of hand-helds, citing reasons of high-duty structure being detrimental to iPaq's growth. "High-duty imposed on hand-helds was making this business a non-viable proposition for us. Hence, we decided to discontinue our focus on it. Maybe once the duty-free regime of WTO comes into place, we can again look at introducing iPaqs in the country," reasoned HP India PSG marketing head Shuchi Sarkar. According to her, while the demand existed for hand-helds, pricing of the same continued to be a major issue for customers.".
