When Handspring co-founder Jeff Hawkins did the original design, he looked at the PCMCIA cards and Compact Flash, and said, 'If we could use one of these, we could leverage the support it already has,' ... People thinking in that board size and layout would be already prepped for that kind of slot.
Quotes about handspring (3 Quotes)
Right now I'm working on the back handspring.
There is complete overlap between the product lines (although Palm has a low-end line while Handspring does not) so there is no clear advantage for Palm of adding the product lines together,