TOUGH competition in the palmtop computer market combined with the strong pound pushed down sales of Psion organisers, the company said.

But the group added sales of network products such as PC modems boomed in the first half of the year and the company managed to grow profits marginally.

Psion, which has its industrial manufacturing base at Milton Park, near Abingdon, also announced strong progress in Symbian, the joint venture company created with mobile phone giants Ericsson and Nokia and Motorola.

Symbian, in which Psion is the largest shareholder, was formed earlier this year to promote the Psion EPOC software as a global standard in mobile communications.

Motorola is also set to join the venture and there has been speculation that other computer companies including Sun Microsystems and IBM are keen to become involved.

Psion's chairman David Potter did not rule out further partners taking a stake in Symbian, but he emphasised that such stakes would not radically alter the shape of the venture.

He said: "It is doubtful we will add to the equity holders, we do not want to see ourselves diluted down."

Instead Mr Potter chose to emphasise the licensing programme for the Psion software which he said had attracted interest from over 30 companies.

The Psion group revealed that pre-tax profits for the six months to June 30 were almost flat at £4.11m compared with £4.05m last year.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.