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Palm Announces Separated Software Operations

Posted by timothy on from the wish-they'd-license-be-through-palm dept.

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?"

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. I don't think so by Wind_Walker · · Score: 1, Redundant
    I really don't think that this is going to have the effect of breaking up Palm. Remember, they have 3COM backing them, and 3COM still makes one helluva network card.

    What I see happening is Palm beginning to sell their OS to other handhelds to try and steal some of the market away from Microsoft Windows CE (because, as all Slashdotters know, M$ == evil). By splitting the two companies, Palm OS can now be viably marketed to other platforms. Before, it was just a single company with a lot of proprietary knowledge, but once they do this split, they can start to open-source it (in a manner of speaking).

    It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes, because if Palm does begin to sell their OS separately, then they'll have money for development. If they have money for development, then we'll see some great enhancements to the Palm OS, and I for one will welcome the change... just so long as they keep supporting my Palm IIIx :-)

  2. Palm still may lose out by kenneth_martens · · Score: 2, Redundant

    It seems to me that Palm is doing this to hedge their bets against Microsoft. This way, they can split the company--if Microsoft kills Palm OS, the hardware division of the company will survive, and vice versa.

    The reason they are doing this may be because their market has become saturated. As the Yahoo! article mentioned, "demand for organizers has ebbed," and "unlike Microsoft, Palm does not have a multibillion-dollar product like Windows to fall back on." So it looks like this move is Palm's way of trying to ensure their survival as they do business against Microsoft.