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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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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.
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 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.
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.