Philips
Nino 300 Series

The Philips Nino 300 Series was a Microsoft Windows CE-powered PDA (personal digital assistant) which had a monochrome screen and offered handwriting recognition and basic voice control software. Applications on the device included an address book, task list, expense manager, diary, note taker and email client.  It was the second of three products. The Nino 200 and Nino 300 had monochrome displays while the Nino 500 had a colour screen.  It was launched at a time when the Palm Pilot and Palm III, which were being manufactured by 3Com, were popular. Windows CE was a predecessor to Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform. The handwriting recognition software on the Nino was powered by smARTwriter which was an on-screen keyboard that supported Tegic’s T9 text input and also allowed users to input non-joined-up writing on the screen with the stylus and have it converted to text (see example below). The voice control on the device was called The Pocket Commander. This allowed users to record individual voice commands which could be attributed to certain capabilities (see options below). The Nino family of devices were developed under the stewardship of Tony Fadell and were some of the first products to use Audible’s audiobook service (Audible was later purchased by Amazon in 2008 for $300 million). Tony Fadell, who is known as the “father of the iPod”, has subsequently stated that the device and service inspired him to think about how music could be streamed to devices. In the UK, the Philips Nino 300 was launched at an event hosted by Philips in July 1998 with TV weather presenter Sian Lloyd showcasing the product. See official pictures here. Philips abandoned the Nino product line in January 2002 stating that it wanted to “refocus its resources on developing voice and data products, such as ‘smart’ cell phones”. Philips Electronics spokesperson, Marty Gordon also commented that "The market for handhelds, and in particular the stand-alone [Windows CE] palm-size PCs, was smaller than Philips expected." Fadell later claimed that the company confused potential customers by marketing the Nino alongside PCs. He also felt it was too difficult to differentiate from other Windows CE-powered devices. Windows CE was also considered to offer a limited range of capabilities compared to the Palm-powered devices.