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?"

Comments

Interesting...

[Uttles]

I don't think this will signal the end of the Palm hardware line. From my personal experience people think of Palm as THE personal organizer. Yes, they are familiar with others, but they still refer to them as "Palms" rather than "personal organizers." Their market share may be slipping, but I don't see that meaning the end of their hardware.

It's interesting that they split the software division off. Microsoft is a well established software giant and having a company that only does software is not such a lucrative position with MS in the mix. Unless there's some contract that says Palm hardware has to use Palm software, I wouldn't be suprised if we eventually saw Palms running Windows CE and never saw Palm software again. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way saying MS is better, I'm just pointing out the fact that they are bullies and they will do anything to destroy another software maker.