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Hands Down, Palm is Now Number Two
jamesl writes "InformationWeek reports that the number one PDA operating system now comes from Redmond, 48.1% last quarter (41.2% a year ago) compared to 29.8% (46.9% last year) for PalmSource. The big gainer was RIM, up to 19.8% from 4.9%. Linux ... a valient 0.9%, off slightly from last years' 1.9%.
The article has some thoughts about where the market is going with phones taking on more PDA functions."
With dirt-cheap-to-make phones taking over the (simple) functions of PDAs, I can't see the market for pure PDAs improving much. Honestly, I always found a 400$ device too costly to replace my paper address/notebook. But its a different thing altogether if they can offer me the functionality on my phone, for just about the same price.
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I think the pocketpc vs palm battle has reached a tipping point. At this stage people will start to think of buying into an OS with a future, which will lead to accelerating movement away from Palm OS. Think of Netscape VS IE. The remarkable think is that in this case it occurred without any underhanded tactics from MS, and even quite lacklustre support. The main advantage has been the assumption that hardware will catch up with OS demands, while Palm aways tried to live within hardware limitations, resulting in limited product, optimized for 33Mhz.
Thank God for Moore's Law
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
PocketPCs are more versatile. I know this and don't even own one.
Meanwhile, Palm has tried more to generate cash than generate a strategy that makes their product diverse enough to work like an operating system, and not like an appliance with canned tasks.
I've watched them cut their market support to where essentially only Windows is supported. Not the best plan without something better to offer. It's the same battle that MP3 player makers have against Apple--they can't offer much better since they don't have a better online music interface to match the iPod's simple operation.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I'll be modded into oblivion just for pointing out that the corporate employees who run a for-profit website should have just a tiny bit of pride in worksmanship, but who are we really kidding here?
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"Linux ... a valient [sic] 0.9%, off slightly from last years' 1.9%."
A drop of 53% in Linux market share is hardly "slight". A forced retreat is hardly the "discretion" exercised as "the better part of valor". Linux and PalmOS smartphones have an advantage in ease of development and app market momentum. We developers have to counter the Microsoft monopoly advantage in marketing to an American public that expects less from our phones than we do from our watches. Otherwise the nightmare of spam, cracks and crashes will follow us everywhere we go today.
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make install -not war
It fails to consider people like me who have a pocket pc and used it until my ipaq was abandoned was no longer supported. As a result i flashed by device to dual boot to familiar linux then later removed the PPC partition. I have a Pocket PC that runs linux. From the the posts on the familiar list, there are quite a few other people who do so as well however, this report would think we were running windows.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
For instance, Pocket Word tends to screw up formatted tables, inline images, formatting, the like, while Docs to Go has repeatably demonstrated in the past that their product does not. Sames goes for things like Pocket Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Walt Mossberg had a great article on this a while ago. What's more, DTG practically comes with every Palm product nowadays.
While this may have changed in the most recent future (last I heard "Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003" still had this problem), I doubt 2005 greatly changed it. Now of course, perception is everything, and one might *think* PocketPCs would be better with office, but as we know perception is not always in line with reality.
I liked my Palm since 1997, but only used it for the most basic things, primarily to look up addresses, appointments, and simple lists. Now that the iPod can do most of what I used my Palm for, I just carry that. Costs less too.
I would have to say that PalmOne deserves whatever happens to them. Until the release of the T5 I was a die-hard Palm OS fan, owning now less than six different Palm devices over the years (starting with the original Palm Pilot.) However when PalmOne released the T5 it was such a slap in the face to all of their customers that I couldn't believe that a company could be so stupid. For the T5 is essentially a T3, execpt with some more memory. And no Wi-fi. And no Cobalt. And did I mention no Wi-fi? The day after PalmOne released the T5 (October 4) I decided against upgrading my Treo 600 to a Treo 650 (which has a meagre 32mb of ram and NO WI-FI) and instead bought a Dell Axim x30. It has Wi-fi, a exteremly fast processor (624mhZ) and tons of memory. While I find the OS unstable, I now see how much the PalmOS has limited me.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
I've wanted a linux pda for years.. I just cant afford to pay cheap computer prices for a PDA.
Problem is that the companies that make them sell them for too much! If they made them more affordable it wouldnt be 0.09%.
I have an old palm III.. can't justify spending over $300 on a new pda.
Hey Zaurus and other linux pda makers.. Make them more affordable and we'll buy them!
Anyone know where to get linux based pda's cheap?
JD
Gartner is completely full of crap. I'm posting anonymously now because my current company's product is climbing up Gartner's recommendation list. We're doing it by rimming Ronnie Colville basically, and in return we get the joy-love treatment from Gartner and in turn the press. We start doing well on the magic quadrant, next thing you know we're getting in depth magazine lab reviews that praise us for features we don't actually have.
On the flip side, a few years back I worked for a company that was on Gartner's shit list. There we were regulary beaten up on the magic quadrant for not having technology that we'd INVENTED and brought to market first. Hello?
Making decisions based on Gartner's recommendations is about as smart as using a dartboard.
i think thats rather unfair. sharp's pdas are successful in japan. It is too much of a coincidence that sharp, sony, toshiba all have very nice pdas but do not sell well in europe/usa and have pulled out(almost). just calling it a marketing failure is not right its probably more of a cultural thing.
Could the dive in Linux PDA adoption be related to the failure of the Zaurus line and Sharp's nonexistent attempts to promote it?
the =zaurus line is far from a failure, it still makes the newest PocketPC machine look like a joke.
Sharp made the decision that the american public are not smart enough to handle their Zaurus and therefore only sell it in Japan where it is a raging hit.
Before you moderators start frothing and aiming for that overrated and flamebait button, this is a known fact with all products designed in Japan. Many MANY products never get here because they are convinced that the product is too difficult for an american to use/play/own.
The BEST vcr I ever owned is a Minidv/DVCAM/SVHS combo from SONY that you have to either buy in jap[an or have a friend ship to you, and youy can not find any information about outside Japan.
If the Zaurus line, expically the clamshell designs were sold here and actively marketed they would sell very well.... IF they were dumbed down a bit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For a developer, you can't see very far ahead can you. I just got a 5 GIG CF card for my WinCE Toshiba E805. 5 gigs is enough space for a full blown server, and I can carry it in my pocket, with a 802.11b connection as well. What I'd really like to see is widespread 802.11b, then I can use skype and my PDA will replace my cellphone, instead of the other way around.
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
Take the Zaurus calendaring software, for instance. Being used to the Psion calendar software, I found the Zaurus one just too restrictive, and gave up on it pretty quick. Also tried using KOrganizer on the device, and sure it worked, and had plenty of features, but it was a terrible strain on the eyes.
The applications on the Zaurus are way too basic, lack integration, it's too hard to navigate the system, and at least my SL-C700 is not particularly stable either. The only reason I'm keeping it is because it's got a great hardware design (feels sturdy, has a usable keyboard, and a high-resolution screen), and good Japanese input support (which Sharp seem to have gotten right during those many years developing non-Linux-based PDAs). Thanks to these factors the device is useful for some tasks, but it's hardly indispensable, and I'm not interested in upgrading to a more recent model.
For a truly useful device I'd happily shell out $300, but I don't expect to be come across an attractive enough Linux handheld anytime soon. In the meantime, one can only hope that someone will release a Linux handheld with a truly solid OS, even if not all that featureful, shipped with full source code and a Linux-hosted SDK, included in the box. If the applications aren't there, at least it should be easy to start developing your own.
The added punchline there is that PalmSource has been working on a new OS for a while, Cobalt -- er, BeOS -- er, PalmOS 6, which addresses a lot of the software problems. PalmOne, the hardware company, refuses to commit to being a customer for Cobalt -- they're happy with what they have now. If the corporate market is going to PocketPC and the consumer market is going to smartphones, I wonder just who's going to be using Cobalt when it ships.
Sorry to break it to you, but better technology doesn't always win (take Mac OS vs. Windows). But that's not the case this time. Windows CE is more appealing because it integrates better with Windows (hmmm...).
Who moved my sig?