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Palm Announces Separated Software Operations
Eharley writes: "'Palm on Monday announced it has completed the split of its operating system division from the rest of the company. The software unit will now report separately on the financial performance of its licensing business, and could eventually be spun off or sold by Palm.'
Yahoo is carrying the story here. Considering that their market share in PDA devices has been slipping, is this a move that will signal the end of the Palm hardware line or organizers?"
Makes total sense when they're now licensing their OS to several different hardware manufacturers. Think about it. Their hardware team is in direct competition with their own software sales team.
Several companies are in this unique situation but Palm must have realised the benefits of splitting themselves up. Kind of like 3Com splitting off Palm in the first place.
Oh Well. 2002-01-21 01:30:45 Splitting Palm (articles,news) (rejected)
*** I am the real stylewagon
The official press release is at: palm.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
"and could eventually be spun off or sold by Palm".
I see it now. . .
Palm spins it off, MS's mere presence threatens to buy and squash it so AOL buys it and uses that as another "see I got that too" to MS.
AOL can't figure out what to do with it so they decide to embed it in their mythical "AOL anyhwere" web-applicance along with RHL, Mozilla, Winamp, etc. Suddenly AOL buys another OS so that MS can't quash it, Palm OS is no longer 'needed' in their scheme so they open-source it and make it another AOLServer, the chaos continues and MS wins because they're the only ones with a direction.
Let's see if my prediction happens. I see a pattern emerging. . . .
In the computer industry, the money is ALWAYS in software rather than hardware. Look at the margins that hardware companies make, or why Microsoft sells each X-Box unit at substantial loss. The marginal cost for an additional copy of Palm OS, or Tony Hawk 2.5X, or whatever, is practically nothing; however, the marginal cost of an additional video card or Palm Pilot is substantial. Greater profits are earned in the software market.
Also, market saturation will reach the hardware market for PDAs much faster than the software market. Who wants to buy another Palm after they just bought their V for three hundred dollars two years ago? Eventually, devices will reach sufficient power and size that continual advancement is senseless, and additional profits will only be extracted by writing new software. Way to see the future, Palm.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Palm's biggest problem is their processor the "Dragonball" - a special version of the 68xxx series with buildt in LCD display controller.
This processor is OLD !
The competitors are miles ahead (BTW: Cool record !)
EPOC - ARM9
PocketPC - StrongArm
Linux - StrongArm
All 32 bits and a modern OS.
Motorola has several successors to the 68xxx series, but none for the PDA marked, the Coldfire for embedded use and the PowerPC for the desktop, and some embedded powerpc variations.
Would you mind explaining to me exactly why my Handspring needs a 2 ghz processor?
Biggest problem is NOT the processor. There are tons of market factors as to why Palms may not be selling. One that comes to mind is, oh, that the processor is perhaps good enough and no one's in a hurry to upgrade!!
PalmOS is intuitive, simple, and does EXACTLY what it was designed to do. It doesn't need any major programming and its very powerful and flexible. How much processing power do you need to call up a person's phone number when you tap their name???
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Just the other day, my faithful old Palm IIIx bit the big one -- it spontaneously stopped working. I called Palm this afternoon to arrange a replacement, being reasonably certain that even though I had an extended warranty, I would be almost certainly get the run around from customer service. Boy, was I wrong! Not only did they honor my extended warranty, they've shipped out a IIIx replacement that will supposedly be here on Thursday.
I thought for sure that with all the handheld problems cropping up of late that Palm would follow in the footsteps of other companies, changing their policies as they pleased. But I'm happy to report that that's not the case.
--=Major
One useless man is called a disgrace; two are called a law firm; and three or more become a Congress. -John Adams, 1776
The stock market was up on DotComs too...and about a zillion other companies. The stock market is easily impressed by glitz. Anyways, margins may be relevant, but you're making a big jump here claiming that it is because of margins and not because of other issues (e.g., major inventory issue). You're also making a mistake in automatically assuming the price == margin. Palm sells their less than state of the art devices for nice margins based on its name brand, wide spread use, and simple things like styling (e.g., Palm V). They've also got some very nice margins on PalmOS licensing at about 1.50 a unit. Compare this with Compaq and others that are fighting to pack the most state of the art components in but are adding little value in as a company....
Well I've not used PalmVII extensively, but I have used most others. They get excellent battery life. I've got a PalmVx and i use it regularly and charge it about once every 3 weeks without issue. Name one PocketPC device that can do this. Also, compare the battery life on the power draining wireless features of other PocketPCs while you're at it too.
Ergo they are dead? I disagree. You're also neglecting the fact that Palm is still very much king of the hill here. You could have argued much the same for DOS, Win3.11, Win95...