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Palm OS 5.0 Preview
Propane sent in an
excerpt from Palm's Palm OS 5.0 Preview
"Palm OS 5, the latest version of the world's leading mobile platform, redefines market expectations and creates new opportunities for licensees, for developers, and for end users. In addition to supporting ARM®-compliant processors from industry leaders Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments, Palm OS 5 also enhances multimedia capabilities, incorporates a suite of robust security options, and expands support for wireless connections. In providing these new capabilities, Palm OS 5 builds a foundation for the future of mobile computing while also maintaining compatibility with existing software. "
No screenshots, no specifics, just a lot of buzzwords arranged in Mad Libs style order.
Palm sales aren't down because people are buying so many HP's & Compaq's....a 44% decline in Palm's unit sales would be more units than HP and Compaq sell in a year. Palm sales are down because people with Palm 3's (or even older) are still using them to do the same simple tasks they've done since day 1 and have no reason to upgrade. They saturated the market but haven't managed to create upgrade demand.
From the press releases, it's not clear that Palm is addressing any of these issues. OS5 claims no more functionality than you can get on a Sony right now. What about a real window system? What about a real file system? What about a real database? What about 32bit addressing and memory protection? Support for 320x320 screens and some audio and bluetooth APIs isn't going to hack it.
Altogether, OS5 may be more of an incremental improvement over previous versions, offering mostly features that companies like Handera and Sony have already offered on their Palm devices. That may simply not be enough to succeed in the market, given that it's competing against both WinCE and Linux on some nifty hardware.
Well, at least, ARM-based Palms may end up being a nice platform to port Linux to, and it may become available at fire-sale prices if things keep on going this way.
Unfortunately, those who need to get real work done don't want "hackable" and they couldn't care less about the "geek factor" of running Linux, X and GTK+. They care about having a handheld that is small, light, stores all their information and is simple and quick to use. This is the segment that Palm is trying to target, and they do very well with these people. I have a Palm Vx and a Pocket PC device (Jornada 720) and disregarding bulk (the Pocket PC devices are huge), I'd choose the Palm any day because it's the best tool for storing contacts, notes, TODO lists, my calendar and the like. It just works, and it works well.
Incidentally, this is why Palm sales are so slow - the Palm you bought 2 years ago still works perfectly and quickly, so there's no reason to upgrade.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Is Palm now joining the list of IT vendors that created innovative, best-selling products, then sat back and shot themselves repeatedly in the foot with poor marketing, poor execution, and greed? And all the while Bill Gates stood (stands) in the background laughing his head off, knowing that Microsoft's slow, steady effort would eventually pass and crush the innovator?
sPh
Sorry but a pda doesn't need to play mpeg video, display in 32 bit color, and have 3d accelerated OpenGl support.
If more customers are willing to spend more money for PDAs that play mpeg video, display in 32-bit color with accelerated 3-D graphics and can remove unsightly body hair, then that's what PDA makers are going to produce. And those who don't will go out of business.
That's just the way life is.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Palm's market share has dropped from ~71% last year to 58% this year. Handspring's share grew from 14% to 15%, and Sony's share grew from 1% to 6%. Note that this we are talking about the entire handheld market in unit sales, not just PalmOS handhelds. By my figuring, the 3 major PalmOS vendors have about 80% of the market.
Let's put this in perspective, shall we? All PocketPC manufacturers together sell fewer handhelds than Handspring and Sony together. Palm's own handhelds outsell all PocketPC devices combined by almost a factor of 3.
I do think that Palm needs to split off the OS unit into an entirely separate company, to avoid the problem of competing with one's licensees, and I do think Sony (much as I hate their DMCA-loving guts) makes much slicker PalmOS handhelds these days than Palm or Handspring (though my m505 meets my needs).
That said, I don't think Palm is doomed, and I do think there's a real astroturf campaign being waged by Microsoft across the net. Here's a clue - wherever you see "Palm's unit share down 44%! PocketPC revenue share increases by 73%!" someone has an agenda to make Palm look bad - if they weren't trying deliberately to do so, they wouldn't compare apples (unit share of a single PalmOS manufacturer) to oranges (revenue share, i.e. share of total dollars spent, of all PocketPC licensees).
Yes, the number of dollars being spent on PocketPC devices is increasing (still only 26% of total dollars spent on PDAs). This statistic itself is misleading given the much higher prices (and manufacturing costs) of PocketPC devices. Those PocketPC 2002 devices cost a bundle to make; wake me up when a PocketPC manufacturer claims margins close to those of any PalmOS manufacturer.
I'm not saying Palm couldn't lose their lead in market share to PocketPC handhelds. I'm just saying they haven't lost it yet, nor are they doomed to lose it barring some extraordinarily shady tactic from Microsoft (e.g. deliberately breaking all PalmOS hotsync capabilities in their next OS - something that won't happen unless MS greases enough palms to repeal all the antitrust legislation we've got).
Others have made the adequately made the points that PocketPC devices are still usability nightmares compared to Palms, and so are really only selling to extreme gearheads who "need" that colorful battery-sucking brick to impress the neighbors/vendors/clients/ladies. "But look! You can watch the Matrix on it! All I had to do was hook my VCR to my computer, encode the video into a 15fps MPEG file, which I stored on my $300 microdrive, which fits into the CompactFlash expansion sleeve, which fits on my iPaq like so! Of course, I can't watch the whole movie on a single battery charge unless I use the PCMCIA sleeve which has an extra battery and more than doubles the thickness, but look!! Keanu!!"
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
From all the news articles I've read, the PDA market was growing well into early 2001, then fell into a large tailspin. The numbers you are quoting are probably far more indicative of the start of 2001 then then end.
:)
The other thing to consider is that you are quoting numbers about unit shipments, while I'm sure that the '44%' number being quoted for Palm is in terms of revenue. The average selling price of a Palm has come way down over the last year due to price competition and Palm's introduction of new very low-end units. I'm seeing m100's selling for C$150 - that would make them under US$100...that's dramatically lower than their entry level PDA's at the start of 2001 (more than 44% so).
Finally, good old anecdote : I see lots of people with Palms & Visors, but they are of all different models....the people I know with Palms don't talk about upgrading them or getting new ones. I have not actually seen an iPaq or Jornada in the 'wild'....not sitting in the airport, not at my doctor's or dentist's office, nada. If they are taking over the world they must be doing it somewhere else.
This is obviously mostly marketing hype (their PalmOS vs PPC list is as bad as M$'s PPC vs PalmOS list). Give us some real information... What kind of memory protection will the new OS have? (currently PalmOS has none!). How's the file system going to work? Multitasking wasn't menioned, but has been brought up in the past; how is it being implemented? (PPC's multitasking sucks)
The only thing that really stands out to me is "supports up to 320x320 resolution". Big deal... Sony has that now. Why the Hell don't they support up to 480x320? You'd get the high resolution that the Sony units along with the virtual graffiti area that PPCs and Handeras have. Some people prefer one over the other, but pretty much *everyone* would appreciate having both.
As far as all the "PalmOS is dead, PPC rules" posts, you're either uninformed, stupid, or running a FUD campaign. PalmOS *still* controls 80% of the market, despite M$ pouring huge amounts of money into PPC. If PPC was its own company, they would've gone under a long time ago. Palm doesn't have a sugar daddy, and they're not in great shape financially, but they're certainly alive and kicking. It's possible that they'll go under in a few years (they are buring through their cash pretty quick) but who knows?
As far as comments about Palm being nothing more than an organizer and PPC being a computer, (1) that's been discussed to death and (2) who the crap modded them up? A quick refresher... having a taskswitching vs multitasking OS does not differentiate between a PDA and a computer. Multimedia isn't required either. All PalmOS devices can run spreadsheets, databases, programming languages, word processors, games, email, web browsing, etc... They are real computers.
Some people want better audio and video playback, so Palm is adding it. Does this go against the Zen of Palm? Perhaps... depends on how it's done. We'll know soon.
Palm did well - so well that the majority of their customers don't want or need to upgrade. They made a PDA John Doe could use (John doe could barely send email when he got his palm). So what have they had to do? They've had to expand their market to include other groups to keep their sales up, now they've got the wireless PDAs, and they've got the cheap PDAs, and now they've saturated that market with satisfied, non-returning customers. The only market they don't have a PDA for is the power-user market, and they really haven't made much headway into the enterprise market (not nearly as much as they were expecting).
So they've painted themselves into a corner. Handspring at least did a little better - by making their PDAs cheaper and non-upgradeable they have customers that are starting to wonder if they should get the new model - but not many, because they have the same market Palm has, and these people don't care to fix what's not broken.
So they see their sales dropping, and they are going to be cutting jobs and weathering the storm (by seperating their businesses, etc), and at the same time try and find a way to 1) get people to upgrade 2) break into other markets.
They've chosen primarily 1. They indicate that palm 5 will have backward compatability, but don't indicate any sort of forward compatability - soon you'll see apps that only run on >= P5 OS. They are hoping that this will happen quickly enough to save them before they run out of money. The only 'new' market they are trying to get into is the enterprise market again They've been trying to get into if for years, and haven't made any headway because their devices are not seen as necessary. Of the highly touted new features, the only one the palm doesn't have in its earlier versions in one form or another is the encryption - which John Doe doesn't need, care for, or want to deal with. This is a feature that the 'enterprise' customers have always wanted - on paper. They won't likely use it to its fullest, but it's a comfort buzzword they think they need.
Prognosis: Not good. Palm won't die out, but they won't have the time or resources to make any significant change to its OS and retarget it for larger, untapped markets. Its current offering is slightly less dazzling when seen side by side at the shopping mall, and not nearly as well marketted as the PocketPC.
-Adam
Newton's greatness was more than just NewtonScript, it was the design of the entire Newton OS. I've owned Palms and Windows CE devices and (in a desperate attempt to find a usable pen-based system) a Fujitsu Stylistic running Linux+KDE. I just couldn't satisfy my needs for an "information everything device" with any of these systems. I had owned a Newton long ago (until 1995) when the display got shattered and I remembered it fondly, so in 2001 I bought a Newton 2000 unit to see if it was still as nice as I was remembering it to be.
The level of integration on my Newton is unmatched by Palm or CE. For example, I installed a mail program (SimpleMail) and suddenly, all applications on the system had a new option to send the current document or current page as an e-mail. If in a database, for example, I select the mail option, it will bring up my names and let me select the person to whom I want to send a nicely formatted copy of the database. If I tap the mail option in a sketch program, the image will be exported as a GIF and mailed as an attachment. This ability of a program (like SimpleMail) to add functionality to the system (like e-mailing) means that as you install the applications you need on the Newton to manage the types of information you work with, things get more and more integrated, rather than less integrated with each new application as happens in PalmOS or Windows CE. If at some point I don't need mail any more, I will delete the SimpleMail application (only two taps needed) and the mail option will disappear from all of the programs on the system as if it had never been there.
Furthermore, because I have ethernet (2 PCMCIA slots on this unit) I can send and receive tons of mail, browse the web, read usenet, telnet into my Linux system, etc., all with relative ease. I don't use wireless, but there are many who do. And at the drop of the hat, I can eject the standard 3Com PCMCIA ethernet card and isnert a standard PCMCIA modem if I need to use dial-up PPP.
On my Newton, I never have to remember where any document is "saved" because everything entered into the system anywhere is instantly saved in flash until you remove the information, not in a file, but in the inivisibly-managed "soups" (i.e. a kind of distributed storage database) of the operating system. Applications are stored the same way, so that text and applications are actually managed in a unified manner. It's such a great system...
On Palms, there was always a 1:1 correlation -- your document or information basically "belonged" to the applet you used to enter it; the system wasn't integrated enough to use the same valuable bits of data in many different ways. In Windows CE, I just got tired of using a desktop OS -- too often I found myself navigating my flash card like a hard drive, searching for a filename, doing file -> open, etc.
And in both PalmOS and CE, applications are stored and managed differently from documents (especially in CE, where installing/uninstalling/categorizing applications is a nightmare), while in NewtonOS applications and documents rather unified and are managed and conceptually related to one another using the same taps.
I'll still go to the local CompUSA to try to new Palm devices, but I have recently invested hundreds in two "backup" Newton 2100 units on eBay so that I can continue to use Newton far into the future if nobody else can come up with something as nice. With a 160 MHz StrongARM processor (this from a five-year-old device!) and the ability to use CompactFlash (thanks to the Newton ATA project), a 100dpi 480x320 4-bit depth display and wireless ethernet, I don't feel outdated at all.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW