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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?"
That would be a great twist, especially if JLG came back as CEO. :)
... is that they made their PDAs work *too* well. Think of it this way: everyone who wants a Palm Pilot has one by now and, if they're anything like any of my friends, they're in no hurry to "upgrade", even to a color screen. Palm's gear is great for the tasks it's designed to perform, and, unfortunately for Palm, there's really no constant need to upgrade like there is for a PC. People who bought Palm Pilots 2 years ago are still in no hurry to replace them, unless they've got a bit of disposable cash laying around (and who does, these days?)
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
PalmOS has a much more mature commercial and GCC development suit and numerous language choices. The POSE (Palm OS Emulator) is far superior to the Windows CE equivalents and hardware debugging is better supported.
As a PalmOS and WindowsCE developer I am constantly tortured by the incredibly sluggish hardware level debugging with WinCE devices.
Additionally during development many WinCE applications will run perfectly well in emulation only to fail on an actual device (and hence requiring more hardware debugging). To be true this is always going to be a problem (the softare emulation/hardware differences) and it does effect PalmOS as well but to a much smaller degree (due to their excellent emulator).
I guess my point is WinCE development is so severly hampered by the Microsoft supplied development environment that I'm not surprised there is considerably less software available for WinCE.
I can see some advantages to WinCE having the 'standard' Win32 interface (assuming you already know how to development in Win32 land) but often I find most functionality is 'stubbed out' and it's a constant question of carefully reading the caveats in the documentation regarding what Win32 features WinCE actually does support...
I'd much rather develop under PalmOS anyday.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
"At the end of the day, more than 80% of handhelds sold run Palm OS"
This is no longer mid 2000. At the start of 2001 WinCE had quickly grown from 7% to 10% marketshare. Currently PalmOS devices account for around 70% market share. You can verify this by checking the PDFs of companies that recommend buying options on PDA stocks. WinCE devices are around 26% with the rest taken up by the extremely small players.
7% December/00 to 26% January/02. That is quite a shift isn't it?
--- I do not moderate.
Palm has succeeded in the market [~20m is pretty impressive] because they know precisely what they're about. Many people have tried to make PDA-like devices, but failed because they either tried to exceed hardware limitations or tried to make their OS/Apps do too much, ignoring the actual useful applications that people would use them for.
... Where's a real application that people will actually buy?
... from what I can tell, when the time is right. What opportunity have they missed out on exactly? The opportunity to sell to some bleeding edge techies for some short lived time while the next latest and greatest device comes along? That's not how you run a profitable business.
The modern PocketPC may be quite a bit further along, but it's really not there yet. It offers few worthwhile reasons to switch and many drawbacks. I mean, for the extra 100-300 dollars, what do you get precisely? You certainly get far inferior battery life [especially if you try to use the handheld as the computer it is marketed to be, not as a PDA]. You get an interface that is not nearly as well designed for actual PDA usage. Palm's UI, while it may not be very pretty by todays standards, is fast and is easy to operate proficiently on the go. In short, while PocketPC may _technically_ be able to run all the PDA applications, it does a significantly inferior job of it on the aggregate.
In it's place....we get what? Word and Excel are only be a frustration for the average person to operate. Even for advanced users, it's pretty frustrating. Mp3s? The storage capacity is not nearly there for me at least and the sound quality is pretty flat.
It's not as if you can say that Palm has been or is a failure. They've got the vast majority of the PDA marketshare and they're still controlling roughly 80% of NEW PDA sales DESPITE the presence of these nifty PocketPC gadgets [not to mention the muscle of one very large company].
You may be correct that it is an evolving market. However, many signs show that Palm is adapting appropriately. They're clearly positioning for a radical change (e.g., StrongARM, Be, etc.)
They can test and develop software and hardware quite well without having to spend millions on marketing devices to consumers before they're appropriate. You assert that PocketPC is a success, but has anyone really made any money on it yet when all is considered? I don't think so.
I think what this really means is that we may be within two years see PDA's running the Palm OS from more than just Palm, Handspring and Sony. Imagine a company like Samsung and LG Electronics getting into PDA's big time running Palm OS; I believe Samsung has in a way dabbled with Palm OS with their new cellphone that has the Palm OS built in.
Or imagine NTT DoCoMo i-Mode cellphones with the Palm OS interface; in short, this could lead to widespread acceptance of the Palm OS on cellphones worldwide.