The Inquirer: Why Palm is Doomed
In my recent post about North America's need to build a wireless network, I admitted that I had been wrong about Palm. That they really were doomed. Turns out, The Inquirer has an article that agrees.
My view is that the rise of smartphones, with Symbian as the likeliest OS, is going to make Palm's market disappear. Those who need digital organizers will carry phones that include those features. The higher end is being staked out by much more capable devices, especially as computers become smaller and more portable while retaining their range of features and power (here's where tablets come in).
The Inquirer article actually looks at the situation from a completely different premise. Their argument is that Palm has shot themselves in the foot by making sure that their software and devices work perfectly well with their greatest enemy -- Microsoft:
The problem is that Palm has taken aim at its own foot, shot with deadly accuracy, and is in the process of handing the entire sector to Microsoft. In one seemingly simple step, it has given control of the core functionality to Microsoft.
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Palm is soon to be dead...news at 11
The Kyocera 7135, Treo range of products and the new Sammy GSM Palm-based phone (due out later this year) are good examples of how to do a "smart" phone. Nice interface, Palm's usability, slick looking phone. (mostly the 7135 and the sammy tho)
Ok, I am biased here, but the Palm has good legs left in it yet. In fact if you look at the API for Symbian you will find that it is almost the *exact* same as the Palm API; mayhaps they are trying to make porting a little easier?
MS CE/HPC/CE .Net? Is dead. Useless platform, crap everything. When a Palm has software to edit Word documents more effectively then that tells a story right there...
Palm "catching up" to MS... hasn't had to. The OS was lightweight enough that it could suffice with a 33/66Mhz processor. When was the last time you needed to be able to run protein folding calculations on your Palm? People should think about the operation space before they quote speed requirements. Yes the newest Palms can do video (finally in some folks minds) but its really kind of pointless beyond a gee-whiz/nerd status factor.
My only worry for Palm is that OS 6 (the merge of BeOS into PalmOS) is not going as smoothly as hoped or adds unneeded bloat instead of "needed" features.
links for above:
Samsung sph-i500
Treo
Another Samsung
Kyo 7135
E/.
downtown this morning
I was standing in line for dim sum, the girl in front of me had a Tablet-PC, she was answering email - in chinese - with the stylus.
Typing chinese into a keyboard is difficult at best. But watching her, it was fluid and way faster than typing. Quite a revelation.
More stories saying the same thing
Unsurprisingly, Russell Beattie says "the writing is on the wall for PDAs".
GM has apparently committed to a sales force automation project using Nextel smartphones running Java. GM cites the non-threatening nature of phones, maintaining that they are easier to use and understand for non-technical folks. And, of course, means that there is only one device to carry around.
Car salespersons:
one of the last bastions against notebooks/laptops.
He also says the projection keyboard is good, but I can't agree they don't work where it's bright.
My Motorola Java phone, even though it's got a clean embedded implementation, is slow in Java.
I don't want to type into
a handset whatever flavor it is, I would prefer phone functionalities built into a tablet computer, where there'd be a cpu powerful enuf to do unified messaging well.
Lugging...
Lugging around a tablet all the time would be a pain in the butt though. As would having to talk to your tablet.... i guess you'd need a headset... all so cumbersome. I want a phone that would have much of that IBM Metapad idea built in. I could plug it into a terminal to use as a PC/Tablet if I wanted, but could lug around a small phone-sized device that would work much like a smartphone the rest of the time... Ideal?
I've been lugging...
a phone & a notebook/laptop around for 6 years, plus a Pilot for one of those years, and almost an iPod last yr.
All-in-one would be so much nicer. I already use a headset.
And yes, I want a as big a cpu as possible in it, so it can do things that's challenging like unified messaging, profile management, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, grafitti, photo capturing and editing, sound recording, browsing, terminal, remote-control, IM, email, mp3, divx...etc.
What I also want in it is a secure removable memory module (1GB or so) which contains my profile, address-book, email folders and other personal stuff.
And I fully expect this thing to fold up to be no larger than a Palm.
??
"...and shown a convincing lead in performance over WinCE based devices," Palm only caught up to PocketPCs this yr by going to the faster XScales.
Palm has long had conduit for Outlook and none for Netscape/Mozilla, so why the bitching so late in the day?
btw, Outlook syncing is what most customers need, he neglects to say; certainly the well-heeled execs who'd have Tungsten's.
MS quality issues...
Probably true, but I wonder if MS can come up a quality embedded OS? It has been years and years of Windows CE, HPC blah blah blah and they still dont have very much.
Symbian is a great OS, so the death of Palm over Symbian isn't too bad.
Didn't say MS would win
In fact, every single one of their "smartphone" partners have dropped it. And the PocketPC platform isn't that hot and starts to look even less attractive as the price of portable computing drops.
I don't lament the loss of Palm to Symbian, but, Symbian and the telco/service provider mindset seems to be just as bad about controlling access to "their stuff".
I think the lesson here is that unless you have a near-monoply, it's a win-win to stick with standards and open your APIs so other people can inter-operate with you.