Hand Held Products (previously HHP) was a US electronics manufacturer, established in 1981 in North Carolina. The company was a manufacturer of linear and 2D handheld barcode scanners based on imaging technology. Its product range included rugged mobile computers, image kiosks, and barcode verification devices. Its range of data collection and communication products were designed for mobile, on-site, and transaction processing applications. In 2007, the company was subsumed into the

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

Group.

History

The Hand Held Products company, established in 1981 in

Charlotte Charlotte most commonly refers to: *Charlotte (given name), a feminine form of the given name Charles ** Princess Charlotte (disambiguation) ** Queen Charlotte (disambiguation) *Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, a city * Charlotte (cake) ...

, North Carolina, began as a manufacturer of memory modules for

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

and

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

programmable calculators, and grew rapidly from 1983 thanks to an RFP hand-off by Hewett-Packard, as the package delivery company

Federal Express FedEx Corporation, originally known as Federal Express Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company specializing in transportation, e-commerce, and business services. The company is headquartered in Memphis, Tenness ...

selected their Micro-Wand portable data collection device to begin a

proof of delivery A proof of delivery (POD) is a document that substantiates that goods have been delivered to their intended recipient. For example, a POD can establish that carrier has satisfied its terms of a contract of carriage for cargo by confirmation of ...

system for package tracking. In 1996, Hand Held Products launched a mobile computer with 2D imaging technology, the Dolphin 7200. In 1997, the Hand Held Product's Dolphin portable computer was selected by the

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...

to be part of their proof of delivery system, although a third party provided the manufacturing. The deal was the industry's largest ever single order, at 300,000 units. In 2006–2007

started replacing these portable computers with Motorola portable computers (370,000 units), which had bar code reading hardware (2D imager) and decoding and image processing software designed and supplied by Hand Held Products. The company became HHP in late 1999, following a merger with Welch Allyn Data Collection, a subsidiary of

Welch Allyn Welch Allyn, Inc. is an American manufacturer of medical devices and patient monitoring systems. Headquartered in Skaneateles Falls, New York, it was family-owned until it was acquired in 2015 by Hillrom. Hillrom was purchased by Baxter In ...

formed in 1972, which by the 1990s was manufacturing a complete line of handheld

bar code A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

readers. From then, the company had its company headquarters in New York. Hand Held Products had a significant presence in Europe, with its EMEA headquarters and European repair center in

Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...

, Netherlands. It also has offices in the UK, Germany and France and sales representation and resellers in most countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Hand Held Products also has offices in Latin America and Asia. On January 1, 2005, the company dropped HHP as its brand name and returned to its original name Hand Held Products. On October 15, 2007, Hand Held Products announced they had agreed with

to be purchased for $390 million. On December 20, 2007 Honeywell’s acquisition of Hand Held was approved, and Hand Held became a new line of business within the Honeywell Security Group, initially called Honeywell Imaging and mobility. With Honeywell's acquisition of Metrologic in 2008 they renamed the business unit Honeywell Scanning and Mobility.

References

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External links

Honeywell Scanning and Mobility
1981 establishments in North Carolina 2007 disestablishments in North Carolina American companies established in 1981 American companies disestablished in 2007 Automatic identification and data capture Computer companies established in 1981 Computer companies disestablished in 2007 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies