Slashdot Mirror
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
"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.