Slashdot Mirror
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."
I think it was from the stagnation of palm. They had the number one spot for so long they rarely made any large changes to their os. When Microsoft came out with their os for mobile devices palm tried to catch up and wasnt able to
Can Microsoft really be considered a monopoly anymore?
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.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I'd quote from the linked article but it seems to be slashdotted so I'll quote from an infosync article:
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5526.html
"It should be noted that these percentages apply only to the handheld market, which for the purposes of this study excludes the widely-popular palmOne Treo 600. The Treo line has had a long history of reclassification, and often bounces back and forth between different market categories in different studies."
Gartner has had a long history of producing studies that suggest Palm is losing to Microsoft. Their latest tactic seems to be to exclude the best selling Palm product from their studies.
http://nyamenation.org/
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.
Article seems to be /.ed so:
j html?articleID=52601413
----
Microsoft Seizes PDA Market Lead From PalmSource
Microsoft led the market in the third quarter for operating systems used in personal digital assistants, surpassing for the first time the Palm OS that dominated the handheld-computer segment for years.
By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb, InformationWeek
Nov. 12, 2004
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
Microsoft Corp. led the market in the third quarter for operating systems used in personal digital assistants, surpassing for the first time the Palm OS that dominated the handheld-computer segment for years.
The Redmond, Wash., company shipped 1.38 million units of Windows CE in the quarter ended Sept. 30, accounting for 48.1 percent of the market, researcher Gartner Inc. said Friday. PalmSource trailed far behind with 850,821 units, or 29.8 percent of the market.
During the same period a year ago, PalmSource shipped 1.2 million units, 46.9 percent of the market, compared with Microsoft's 1.04 million units, or 41.2 percent.
The switch was not a surprise, given PalmSource's focus on supplying an OS for advanced cellular phones, called "smartphones," that contain many of the same features as PDAs, such as contact lists, personal calendars and email. PalmSource's Palm OS is used in smartphones from PalmOne Inc. and Kyocera Wireless Corp.
"They've abdicated their leadership in the PDA market in order to become a significant player in the smartphone market," Gartner analyst Todd Kort said of PalmSource.
The market's No. 3 operating system is from Research In Motion Ltd, which supplies the OS for its own BlackBerry PDA, a device that's popular among businesspeople. OS shipments increased more than 350 percent in the quarter to 565,000 units from 123,775 a year ago. RIM's market share rose to 19.8 percent from 4.9 percent.
Linux was the No. 4 operating system, but its market share dropped to 0.9 percent from 1.9 percent a year ago.
Driven by RIM's success with the Blackberry, the overall PDA hardware market increased in the quarter 13.6 percent to 2.86 million units from 2.52 million units a year ago, according to Gartner. The same driver is expected to account for most of a 4 percent increase for the year to about 12 million units.
Given the PDA market trends, it makes sense for PalmSource to switch its marketing and research and development focus to smartphones. Shipments of the advanced cellular phones are increasing rapidly at the expense of the PDA market, which has been slipping steadily, Kort said. In addition, smartphones have higher profit margins.
"(PalmSource) could fight a little harder, but it's probably smarter to let (market share) slip and put more of the resources on smartphones," Kort said.
RIM's Blackberry is expected to keep the PDA market growing through the first half of next year, Gartner said. In the second half, however, sales are expected to slow, and the overall market is forecast to post a decline for all of 2005.
PDA sales, however, are expected to eventually stabilize within a mature market that's becoming increasingly dependent on businesspeople. Companies are expected to account for 40 percent of sales this year, compared with 29 percent in 2003, according to Gartner.
While consumers can get enough of the PDA's capabilities in a cellular phone, business executives and sales people will prefer the PDA's larger screen for calling up business documents and email attachments while on the road, Kort said.
PalmOne, the largest user of the Palm OS, led the PDA hardware market, but continued to lose market share to other vendors as it too shifted focus to smartphones. PalmOne's share slipped to 26.2 percent from 34.3 percent a year ago.
No. 2 Hewlett-Packard Co. increased market share to 24.2 percent from 23 percent, followed by RIM, which posted a huge jump to 19.8 percent from 4.9 percent. Rounding out the top five were Dell Inc., 6.5 percent from 5.4 percent; and Symbol Technologies Inc., 2.2 percent from 2.9 percent.
You lost me at "Think Palm will start tossing"
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.
Much to my dismay I have just discovered that the latest Psion handheld is running "Wince".
R.I.P. EPOC 5, a decent little OS that did what it was designed to do.
. . . 'cuz I love my Zaurus too, but 1.9% to .9% is not "off slightly". Its a shellacing.
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
Business success has more to do with partnerships and deals, in reality, both OSs are adequate for use as a PDA, so it's really just what kind of business deals that each company can secure.
As it seems the world wants to run a Windows like OS on mobile chips. If they want a Win32 like OS then we should give them a free one.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Link ... they might be blocking links from /. ?
But it's still over 50% of lost market share. I don't see that as a slight drop, personally.
It's their own fault, really. I have a T3 and I love it, but I think it will be their last good PDA unless they pull something out of their arse.
They aquaired BeOS, and did nothing with it. While all their competitors were working wireless into their units, palm comes out with the T5 that is -less- functional then the T3.
It's a shame, too, because the PDA market wouldn't be where it is right now without Palm.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
No, definately salient.
I'm an enthusiastic linux user and advocate (and a kde developer), however I don't think Linux, or Windows is the right OS for a PDA.
They were designed for intel processors, multitasking was a requirement, and various other design factors optimising them for "normal" computers.
PalmOS, however, is optimized for handhelds, doesn't do multitasking (I don't know about palm OS 5) simply because it's not neccesary on a PDA, and has one of the most intuitive interfaces i've seen. Also, PalmOS leaves me loads of space on my 2MB Zire for all of my data (several hundred contacts), and the entire new testament (seriously). I really doubt Windows could run with so little storage, and with Linux, there really wouldn't be that much room for data.
They're still releasing devices with PalmOS 5 which is the saddest apology for an operating system I have seen. Writing PalmOS GUI code is hard - there are so many legacy features you need to check for and deal with. It's clear that the whole thing has just accreted without planning over the years. The current schizophrenia between 68000 and ARM is a nightmare with the worse endianness horrors you've ever seen. I won't even mention proper OS features like memory management, multi-threading and so on.
Customers have been begging for proper wireless support on Palms for a long time and Palm have failed to deliver. A device, today, without at least 802.11b, is a dinosaur before it's born. What the hell are the Palm engineers doing over there?
The software that delivers with the Palm is a little pathetic. Not even a file browser. And main memory has a completely flat file hierarchy so that even with a file browser it's hard to find what you want. No word processor (well, there's an awful 3rd party thing).
It's no surprise they're losing the war. But it needn't have been like this. They had the advantage. And they simply sat on their laurels.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I think there's a huge segment of the handheld users that are project managers, managers, analysts, etc. These people depend on (because of market penetration) Microsoft products such as Excel, Word, Project, and Outlook.
It would make sense that the the most popular "take with you" version of these would be on a PocketPC running Microsoft CE.
If Palm had wanted to remain on the top, they'd have had to offer *seamless* integration with these products, but how can they when they're competing with the company that MAKES them?
This is the a great example of how a monopoly can be used to extend into another market via a "one-off" mechanism.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
RIM Blackberry is strong, but IMHO that's only due to 2 things:
- a keyboard
- an easy to use system
- unmetered email
Ie. it tries to serve customers instead of thinking about milking them dry. Not that it's not they long term goal (maybe) but they provide a decent service for a decent fee.
But that's just a functionnality-based success. Any WinCE, Palm or Zaurus call plan which would offer the same functionnality would quickly become as big. Time to think about new functions too - say unmetered instant messenging (like SMS but free!)
Note to cell phone operators : stop thinking about milking your customers dry. Start thinking about offering services, such as voip roaming (ie if my cellphone finds a wifi network, use sipphone instead of $lousy_gsm_provider - especially when roaming abroad !)
This is IMHO the key to success. Then whatever hardware or operating system that goes along, if it is not too lousy, will grow.
The Zaurus 6000 could have become big. The user interface needed only minor tweaking. If only it had had GSM built it (smartphone like) + some good voip software + a call plan where email and instant messenging would have been free...
The market is lagging not because of lack of functionnality or technical capabiliies (GPRS makes possible to receive calls at the same time you have a data connection on a multiplex-capable GSM phone) but only because a shared monopoly between shitty operators prevent this innovation from appearing. "what if it eats my profits?" is wrong spririt. With the same mentality horseless carriage ie cars would have never existed. "it will eat every competitor alive and grow my market share and thus skyrocket my profits" is right.
Where's entrepreunership and risk taking? I just see deep-coma business !
That's free advice from a disgruntled french cellphone customer.
Well, since a lot of the new mobile phones today have PDA functionalities, Symbian should have been included in the list. Here in South East Asia, more people have these so called smart phones than PDA users, most of 'em are phones based on Symbian.
Take-off every
In this market, Redmond is simply providing the better product, hands down.
Personally I'm happy with my old Palm 5. The battery lasts for ever and it does exactly what it needs to do very well. But I guess the market wants features.
Linux has a loooong way to go here.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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?
[
"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.
--
make install -not war
Obviously competing on a closed source basis with microsoft is hopeless. The market brought out a viable competitor to windows in linux despite the governments hapless efforts. hopefully we'll see some legitamte copmetition that will better the market and people won't wine too much.
Palm phones are - sadly - not as widely distributed in Europe. Well, Denmark, at any rate.
Not like Palm that requires full admin access for every user to use Palm Desktop, at least PocketPC works as a limited user without mucking with the system.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
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
Remember smartphones, the growing market segment (unlike the shrinking PDA segment)?
p ?r eport_id=222287&t=e&cat_id=20
4
"2003 was a breakout year for mobile operating system vendor Symbian Software, which shipped 6.67 million operating systems worldwide--an 88 percent market share of advanced OS-based handset sales. Before 2003, the Symbian OS was resident on only five handset models--all but one from Nokia. At the end of 2003, the number of Symbianbased handsets remained modest, at 11 models from four vendors, with five more scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2004."
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.as
http://www.mobilemonday.net/mm/story.php?id=388
This report is bunk. The results don't count the Treo -- PalmOne's best seller and the leading "smartphone" out there.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
Yes, I do think that the dive in the Linux PDA's could be attributed to Sharp's assinine marketing (or lack there of). I own one of the SL-5500's, and it is one of the best PDA's I have ever used. Had it been marketed, it could have overtaken Palm
Good point, but not relevant to this article. It only measures sell-through, not past market share.
This one Palm did to themselves. Palm had half a dozen years to turn PalmOS into a modern, reliable 32bit operating system, instead they are still shipping handhelds that emulate bits and pieces of an old 68k design, don't multitask properly, and make it hard allocate more than 64k at a time. Apparently, PalmOS 6 has been released, but neither PalmOne nor Sony are even bothering to make handhelds with it; it's too little too late. The only thing that has kept the platform alive is the fact that there are lots of good applications for it and that kept the original GUI more or less intact.
All Microsoft had to do is show up to the party. WinCE isn't a great operating system, but it's a lot better than PalmOS. The thing that has been holding PocketPC back is its awful UI.
My hope would be that PalmOne (the hardware part of Palm) explores some new ideas: Symbian is a great system they could ship right away, or they could adopt one of the Linux-based PDA environments and port a PalmOS emulation layer to that to run all the Palm legacy applications.
TFA says they've abdicated the PDA market for the integrated phone market.
So the market is converging, and saying that someone has a larger or smaller share of part of it is meaningless.
Are PalmOS sales as a whole up? Are WinCE sales up? Which is up more?
I still just want a Linux matchbox I can use to run nmap or ssh. It should have a VGA port, 2 USB ports, and built-in wifi.
sigs, as if you care.
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
While this is bad news for Palm, it's not so bad in that this really just reflects their current strategy: stay in the PDA business, but don't break the bank on it. They believe convergent devices are a huge part of their future (they're already selling 2 different treo models, and are definitely going to continue making more), and who's to blame them? Nowadays, I don't want to carry two devices when I can only carry one. If bluetooth had taken off more in US cellphones (thank you very much Verizon) then we might be seeing a different picture, but as it is, the PDA market is considered dead and/or stagnant.
2 98
"A decline in Palm OS shipments was expected in the third quarter of 2004, but not of this magnitude," Mr. Kort said. "The company is pouring the vast majority of its resources into its smartphone business. A reduction in the number of PDA models palmOne offers is expected in 2005."
Most certainly bad for Palm, but not quite a deathknell. Another two aspects of trickery in this report: this only includes numbers of units *shipped,* not numbers of units *sold.* There is indeed a difference. I'm sure that PalmOne sold less devices in this quarter, but I'm pretty sure these numbers don't include much in the way of the new T5 (meaning it's likely people were still waiting to see what new stuff Palm would have) and who's to say that there isn't a backlog of iPaqs sitting in some warehouse somewhere, waiting to be sold?
Link to another article with the same numbers: http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7
PalmOS is nowhere near as clunky as Windows CE.
For one thing, PalmOS has got a much simpler and more elegant user interface than its rival (Why the hell would anyone think that a desktop metaphor is suitable for a PDA?) and for another it's far faster than it too.
When I'm looking up an address or want to enter a quick note then I don't want to have to navigate through a menu system to get there first and wait while everything happens.
The key advantage PocketPCs have over Palms is the Microsoft factor: just as it has with other markets (eg, web browsers), Microsoft has leveraged its dominance in one market (desktop OS) to achieve success in another.
To suggest that PocketPCs are intrinsically superior to equivalent Palm models is hilarious.
If I were a tad more paranoid, I'd suggest that your comment and one or two others like it I've seen posted about this story were classic cases of astroturfing.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
My last Palm was a Zire 21 that cam free with a laptop. What surprises me is that I can't see any real change from my ancient IIIx.
Seriously, four years ago the Palm was a pretty nice deal. It handled a number of essential functions well, did it better than paper, and synced with your PC.
At the time it was the market leader for a reason.
Trouble is I keep looking at all of the things which reasonably should have evolved or been added and all that I see are the things that are missing, and the software that hasn't particularly improved in four years.
All things being equal, the mid range Palm feels like it should be a $49 retail item, if that.
Three Squirrels
I'm sure the article links to PalmInfocenter.
Palm doesn't even exist. You might as well say Palm Pilots.
There's TWO companies now. PalmSource and pa1m0ne. pa1m0ne is STILL THE #1 SELLER OF PDAS. The OS market share has been lost but that's because of Sony dropping out of the market.
So PalmSource is #2 and pa1m0ne is STILL #1.
You have got to be kidding. When was the last time you saw a TV or print advert for a pocketpc without a price attached. I still remember the Palm adverts with the couple on the two trains quite well. Didn't they have Claudia Schiffer in one of their campaigns. Palm also has enormous mindshare. Any handheld computer is still a Palm Pilot to the uninitiated.
I know you think MS is backing pocketpc's with billions, but remember they are part of the same devision as X-box, which is definitely making a loss. Also palm still has billions in the bank from their IPO during the dot-com boom.
I wish MS would take a larger interest in their creation, and do some more promoting. Instead they are all over the place, with separate implementations for media players and the x-box, when they could have made one integrated platform. Despite their lack of support the market has chosen, and it has chosen versatility and power over "simplicity" and "ease of use".
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
..is the bomb! What's Palm doing on this front? NOTHING!
Forget handheld GPS units, and their tiny little screens. Forget big-screen chart plotters, and their multi-thousand dollar price tags. Get a Pocket PC from your favorite maker, a GPS add-on, some nav software, and be sailing the high seas for $500. Or driving the roads, or flying the now-friendly skies. Pocket PC navigation software rocks.
In fact, Microsoft Streets was one of the killer apps making Pocket PC so popular in the first place.
I've been using a Sony CLIE TJ37 for about 6 months now and I can't say I am impressed by the PalmOS. It's barely capable of the 802.11 that is supposedly built into the system, the apps aren't that much better than the older versions of PalmOS, battery life sucks, and the handwriting input still trails the NewtonOS, which has been dead for 6 years. All these things were acceptable when the PalmOS was trying to run on a dinky 68k chip but I can run Linux or OSX on the same Mhz processor as we find in the Palm systems these days and still, in the case of OSX (and maybe Linux - I dunno how Linux power management is these days but it used to suck), get decent battery life. I don't know that much about Windows Mobile 2004 or whatever it's called, but I can't imagine it'd be less capable than PalmOS.
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.
These things (i600s) simply do not work as advertised. Verizon is lying on their page that says product info. For instance, they claim 240 hours of standby battery time with the default battery. Now, Windows 2003 upgrade has doubled battery performance, where I can almost get 1 full day (24 hours) STANDBY time on my i600 with the normal battery, this is with 0 use. They do include a double size battery that you can actually use for 1 morning-night period of normal use, but heavy use? forget it with these. One of the people at work had one and went hunting, kept the extended battery connected but the phone OFF for the friday night-sunday afternoon time frame, and the battery was DEAD when he got back. So, if you used BOTH batterys, and the phone was OFF the entire time, you would NOT get the 240 hours "STANDBY" time that Verizon claims on their page.
Next problem is basically a BSOD on these things, The same guy who took his hunting just got his replaced with a brand new one from Samsung because he couldn't make calls. Now he can't RECEIVE calls. If you call his phone it crashes. The interior display goes black, and the exterior LCD says "missed call".. We had 11 of these phones, and every single one was junk, was quirky, did NOT perform anywhere near as advertised.
The data sync.. forget about it. One day you get emails with only a 20-30 minute delay, next day no emails come to your phone, next day you get duplicates of the same emails you got the first day, but still none from the second day...
Anyways, I'll wait for the class action, in the meantime, DO NOT BUY Samsung i600's with Windows on them, they are total garbage...
Oh, if you want to ignore me, I still have 9 of them for sale $300 each, gently used.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
That's serious? Would you believe that even more then half a percent of Pocket PC users have done that?
How can 'Redmond' be number one, when they don't produce a single bit of PDA hardware. Their PDA 'OS' offering is fragmented over a whole handful of platforms from a plethora of hardware vendors.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
a valient 0.9%, off slightly from last years' 1.9%.
Since when was a difference of more than half your market share slight??!?
-- I'm so cool, I don't need a sig.
Agreed, the Treo is a tremendously popular unit, and its sales are simply not being counted.
True, the "Pocket PC Phone Edition" is also left out... but I've used one of those and can't believe they've got any significant market share. The mismatch between the OS/GUI and what a phone needs is unreal.
For many Slashdotters, the palm is still their one and only.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
Well, this does remind me of Novell versus NT 4 Server. I wonder what "Microsoft is 1st" really means.
As a two-time Palm buyer, I certainly agree with many of the comments on the thread about Palm not working hard enough to keep up. But the last time I owned a product that MS targeted (RealPlayer Plus - still have my version 4.0 CD), the vendor retailated by trying to milk me as a loyal user - charging an annual fee in order to get continual access to their "new improved" product releases, as they attempted to fend off MS' attack. So of course I switched, not to MS Media Player, but WinAmp and MusicMatch. Yes, I have multiple players now, but I won't be abused by any vendor - Ms or whomever.
For the Palms, I use observation here. I think there are 4 markets now: (1) PDA Classic, (2) PDA-Phone, (3) PDA-Email, and (4) PDA-Wireless. Palm seems to be moving from type 1 to type 2, while RIM is focused on Type 3, and WINCE on type 4. I think for many of us, our expectation was for PALM to do #1, and #3/#4 (both email and real 802.11x wireless). Type 2 is really where Handspring went, and their acquisition meant Palm became mainly #1 and #2. So the real question is can one vendor do all types?
Why this is important is again based on observation. I use a Zire 71 as a type #1; and I carry a cell phone. I bought the Zire knowing it would likely be the last type #1 I would buy, but I am happy with it. I also have a significant ($100+) investment in 3rd party programs and a 128MB SD card. I figured this would all last a while (3 years / 2003-2006). My cell on the other hand is quite **flakey**, and is only 3 years old. Seems to me its problems are due to some cell phone lifecyle expectation of only 24 to 36 months of life. If this is also the PALM expectation, then I can see part of the problem. A PDA is a platform just like any other; I don't want my investment abandoned. Those calling for less backward compatibility are fine with me, but if I have to abandon everything I have, why stay with PALM? Less investment might have meant I would have gone WINCE last time.
Back to the types, and Palm's market share. ISSUE 1: Type 4 - wireless - is really important to the commercial market, where WinCE to Windows development similarity becomes important. How many of the Symbol and other industrial Wireless handhelds are now WINCE based? PalmSource was supposed to have addressed this, but they are focused on the phones.
ISSUE 2: RIM has really taken off for Type 3 (PDA-Email). Even though my company (Global IT Services) has no "official" PDA policy, so many of the managers now own RIMs that it is becoming impossible not to be a delivery or sales manager w/o one (I am neither, and don't want more than the cell phone as a leash for now). Many of these folks used to carry PALMs, but being able to get to email (and for folks to get to them) has become indespensible. Many of the RIMS are also Phones, but most still carry cell phones and the RIMs. We just need to add instant messaging to the RIMS for two-way conversations, and I think it will have a lock.
ISSUE 3: Lots of competition for Type 2. While Palm has a good entry in the Trio series, this is a much tougher market - competing with SONY-Erikson, Moto, Nokia, et. al. More competition = fewer overall sales, lower margins, and more frequent (and costly) product cycles.
ISSUE 4: New competition in the original Type 1 space. I was surprised to see that the iPod has calendaring and address capability. I suppose I shouldn't be; what I am saying is it is not enough for PALM to just sell Type 1's that are just PDA's any longer. This market seems to be in the process of morphing into stand-alone devices that replicate mainly for other purposes - like music and pictures. Too bad PALM didn't recognize this earlier / where is the ZIRE with the 4 GB hard drive?? Would make music and making movies to disk much easier.
To me it is the additional competition and the evolution of the market that is killing PALM
2. Handspring/PalmOne's slow roll out of the Treo 650 and it's lack of 3G or WiFi support (unlike WiFi capability of many Pocket PC devices) means Treo 650 is what is should have been a year ago.
3. Poor marketing and reliability issues with European Treos has given it a bad name, despite being a fantastic product.
4. Microsoft have consistently won not because they are better, but when their competitors slipped up. Netscape had the chance to build webcentric apps into their browser (such as an icon for a shareable spreadsheet or similar), but lost their 'mojo'. So, today, the only innovative browser is Safari (not Firefox!) from Apple.
5. For Palm to make it big, they need to produce something that is basically a Treo 650 minus the antenna but plus WiFi, 3G (for Europe) and an iPod like internal hard drive so it can act as an entertainer and data pod. You MUST demolish your competition to stay ahead - as Apple have done with the iPod. Just plodding along gets you nowhere - slowly.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
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.
WinCE outsold Palm devices last quarter, that true, but remember these points:
1. They are counting ALL WinCE devices, including Palmtop computers.
2. PalmOne was still the #1 seller for the quarter (but when you add up all other PPC makers, they did outdo PalmOne, which is why PPC outsold PalmOS, despite PalmOne being #1)
3. The PalmOS still has greater marketshare when you count total units out there now.
I think it's a crying shame for the Palm community that almost a YEAR AGO, PalmSource made PalmOS 6 (Cobalt) Gold Master, and NOT A SINGLE licensee will use the OS in a device, even though it offers multithreading, native ARM support, anti-aliased text, truetype font support, and a host of other features.
I don't think Palm sales will take off until 2 things happen (I love Palm by the way...)
1. OS 6 comes out on devices and there are good conduits for it.
2. SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE makes conduits for the extra fields on the new PalmOne devices.
I have a tungsten T3, and I was happy to see that it now has repeating ToDos and that the Address Book supports multiple addresses. HOWEVER, I can't sync this data with ANYTHING other than Palm Desktop. Very frustrating, as we use Lotus Notes and work...
Now we can buy from PalmTwo?
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
I think it was from the stagnation of palm. They had the number one spot for so long they rarely made any large changes to their os. When Microsoft came out with their os for mobile devices palm tried to catch up and wasnt able to
It was stagnation due to a change in leadership. Back when palm was #1, they brought in a guy from Pepsi to be their CEO. All he did was focus on marketing and promoting the brand. That is how you sell sugar-water, after all. They did no real R&D and made no major advances. He stayed there for a couple of years while the PocketPCs just got better and better. They didn't get rid of him until the PocketPCs were way beyond Palm's technical capabilities and Palm had no chance of catching up.
I think it was from the stagnation of palm.
It strikes me that there is some significant parallel between the Palm platform's history and the early UNIX wars (SysV, BSD, Ultrix, etc.). The parts of the Palm platform, and its most creative players, went through quite a bit of turmoil, what with aquisitions, break-ups, spin-outs and such. All of these events must have been a major distraction while Microsoft just plowed along and poured in money.
When Microsoft came out with their os for mobile devices palm tried to catch up and wasnt able to
Actually, there was plenty of time, since Palm was in the lead and had a much more user-friendly (fewer clicks to do important things; far better battery life), reliable, focused platform. Handspring pushed that forward as far as it could. The initial Windows CE platform, the H/PC, is all but dead, the AutoPC has gone through massive life support, and what could have been a much faster growth of CE in embedded platforms was greatly slowed by many blunders such as pricing, licensing (not just the OS, but also the initial H/PC applications), and availability of development tools; something the NT side understood and exploited much more effectively.
Contrary to the marketing BS this Windows Smartphone Edition phone is NOT a PDA. It's a slightly more advanced than average cell phone. Here's what it can do that my current low-end standard cell phone (Samsung a660) cannot do: It can sync contacts, calendar, and email from Outlook; It has an external LCD; It has an excellent browser (IE kills all other microbrowsers); It has a SD slot. No handwriting recognition or integrated keyboard of any kind, and "naturally" no touchscreen display for the no stylus to use. Gawdawful GUI (even worse than Nokia's). Utterly unstable, lousy battery life, will lose all contact and other data at any given moment. I could go on.
Ultimate verdict: Not a PDA and a barely passable cell phone. Save some money and get a much better device (PDA + Phone) in the Treo 650 - Phone + PDA + BlueTooth + SD/IO + HighRes + Better camera with video (no time limit on clip) + NON-VOLITILE MEMORY!!!
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
MS Streets has been out for years, and is still the best of the lot. Same with the Maptech stuff for marine navigation.
Maybe you just got some bad batteries. My i600 lasts days on the battery. In fact, I havent had any of the problems you are describing.
That being said, I can't really recommend the phone. The main reason to get the phone is full internet/HTML support. This is a great feature! However, its not easy to rationalize the price for the service given how slow it is. It is almost always faster just to call someone and get the info you need rather than wait for the interent to kick in.
For example, you can get movie listings at moviephone.com which is great, but in the time it takes to get the page loaded up, you could call all the theatres and get listings. Or for example, you can get mapquest up, but by the time you are done fiddling, you could have gone to a gastation, bought a map, and got verbal diretions from 10 people.
Also, the WinCE interface is horribly clunky. I'm the only one who can use my phone because of all the virtual buttons you have to "click". The contacts list for autodial is a hilarious joke. Nobody else can use my phone because of its arcane interface. Which doesnt bother me really, but its pretty sad.
What the...
where did all my formatting go?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/su pproc/default.aspx
.NET (including 4.2 and newly 5.0) supports countless processors, including ARMS, MIPS, PowerPC, and x86.
Windows CE
Combined with piss-poor software like Pocket Outlook unable to use SSL (still!), no proper IMAP support and extremely expensive software ($50 USD for a calculator which costs at most $20 for Palm and is free for Zaurus?) it is really no match. Moreover, if you want a decent keyboard, no dice. Get an external one, which will stop working when the next device is out, because of different connectors or absent drivers.
For example Ko/Pi (port of excellent Korganizer to Zaurus) is by far the best PIM tool you can have on any PDA and it is free (both as beer and freedom) to boot. I used the DateBk 5.x from Pimlico on Palm, that was decent, but not as good. The standard Pocket Outlook does not even come close to this. Moreover, the file format is trivial to synchronize and standard (vCalendar), so no crazy 3rdparty apps are needed for this.
If Sharp shipped their machines with these applications pre-installed instead of the stock stuff (which is decent, however made for Japanese market and doesn't work so well for Europeans or Americans) and you didn't have to spend few hours setting the thing up from command line (yep, /bin/bash on PDA ...), it would take the high end market by storm. Unfortunately their marketing outside Japan was like throwing out a dead fish - "here you have it, do whatever you want with it ..."
And Palm - I started as a Handspring user, I still have my Visor Deluxe (and it works!). Great little machine. Then I had a Sony Clie (expensive mistake) and Tungsten C (even more expensive lemon). Finally I got the Zaurus and I never looked back.
In the Palm OS world innovation was only about incompatibility (Palm OS 4.x, 5.x ...), proprietary extensions (hello, Sony ?), crashes (WiFi on Tungsten C) and basically turning from bad to worse with each model - for example Tungsten T was in metal case but high-end Tungsten C was completely in plastic case, which was losing the paint just by rubbing it by your fingers. Moreover, general lack of periferals, extremely poor networking abilities and general fragility of PalmOS killed it for me.
So if you are looking for a great PDA, get one of the Zaurus models. There are companies importing them from Japan and localizing them into English for you. You will definitelly not regret it.
I get annoyed at the comparisons between closed source and open source. When people think of closed source, they only think of Microsoft, which does things wrong (and annoyingly). I have had a palm since 2002 and I love it, because it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, it is simple and quick. I first bought a visor pro 16mb, after I dropped and cracked that, I bought a palm IIIx, if I drop and break this one, I'll just buy another one for $40, no big deal. Its a shame manufacturers don't value durablitiy in their products. They don't build durable products because people don't want them. I do, though. I used to love my Motorola i700, I could throw it at the ground as hard as I wanted and it was fine. Check these products out. http://www.symbol.com/products/mobile_computers/mo bile_palm.html
Note: I know I spelled right wrong, I ran out of space
"brxref
File browsers are useful. People like to be able to use their Palms to store data from their desktop machines (Palm have belatedly just figured this out with the T5). Additionally I'd like to have apps on my Palm that can use ordinary files from my desktop without a horrible conversion to/from .pdb format. And with these files in place, I'd like to be able to browse them. People need browsers to manage their mp3 files, or to manage photos on their SD cards. I'm not talking 'power user' here. File browsers are also essential to clear up the junk that accretes on Palms over time. Without a file browser you risk eventually losing your memory to leftovers from apps that didn't clean up when you deleted them.
And another thing. I temporarily lost my T|3 for a while and reverted to an original Palm Pilot Professional. The number of advantages of that machine were incredible: better batteries (because I could use external 15 minute rechargeable NiMHs) and a longer lifespan for those batteries between recharges, a display that I could see in any light conditions whether bright or dark and better text input in the form of Graffiti 1. The display doesn't scratch (not one scratch after 8 years. I had to return a Zire 71 when the display wore out after 3 or 4 months). The painted logo and button designs are still in perfect condition. (It does have a slight crack in the case but you can't normally see it and it has no effect.) My new T|3 is showing signs of wear already: the Palm logo fell off(!!!) and the leather flip-cover actually rubs against the metal of the case so that it has 4 'polshed' patches with a completely different look. In some respects Palm devices are getting worse!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I should add one thing. Why did I use the Palm if it has all these problems? Well, for a long time I found the Pocket PCs much worse. Finally they now have the CPU power required to run their bloated OS but when I received a Dell Axim as a present a year or two ago I quickly sold it as it was too slow to use. It felt like you could see each pixel being redrawn individually!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I disagree, it's more complex than that. In the early days, PalmOS was market leader because their OS was designed to run well on the current hardware. The early PPCs ran like treacle.
Now, in fact, they could probaly have kept the hardware the same and still did alright - a Palm M500 is not all that different from a V.
But then hardware finally advance to the stage where it could run PPC. And then Palm had to play "match the check boxes". Look at my Tungsten - C; it's spec is clearly excessive, clearly an attempt to match PPC specs.
Mind you, the sucess of the T-E and Zire shows Palm have not entirely forgotten that they make basic PDAs very well.
But the market is changin a lot too - look at all the big PPC manufacturers pulling out of the market. It looks like PDA/phone convergence is where it is heading too, which I don't like because i prefer seperate devices. I like my phone to be cheap and tiny, my PDA to be powerful and to have a big screen, and my music player to be an ipod. Maybe that's the reason Palm have slipped to #2 - if they are putting all tehir effort into thier Treo smartphone line in anticipation of the PDA market dying...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
If I had five minutes with Palm here would be my suggestions:
Cut back on the number of models and release new models or upgrades on a consistent schedule like twice a year. They currently have nine active models with many overlapping features. It's time to cut back to four maximum. Entry, Consumer, Business/Professional and Phone.
Common features for all four would be:
Two SDIO ports: Most users would use one port for a SD memory card and the other for a 802.11b or Bluetooth card but you could use two memory cards or two networking cards, your choice. Also be forthcoming with the specs and API so third party card makers (like SanDisk) can quickly make compatible products. Currently Palm is obstructing third parties from supporting the Palm in some vein attempt to be the sole provider of such addons at a premium price.
No wireless networking built in. Depend on SD Bluetooth or 802.11b cards. The standards are moving so fast building something in would diminish it's useful life. If a user feels they can get a longer life out of a product many times they're willing to pay more.
Minimum 32M on board memory: 32M allows enough room for contacts, schedules and OS upgrades.
Internal rechargeable battery.
IR port. I know the IR port is tired technology but is still very useful for quick transfers. Besides, while most countries regulate radio communications like 802.11x or Bluetooth, IR is accepted everywhere.
Back lit screen. This is a no brainer. In this day and age selling a decent PDA without it just pisses people off. Even low end models need to be comfortable to use.
Optional "Thumbboard" attachable keyboard. Plugs into the universal port and can be used while moving around. Sometimes pen input is better and sometimes (like using IRC or writing an email) a keyboard is better. Give people the choice to quickly switch back and forth. The phone model would be the exception since it would have the keyboard built in.
Upgradable OS. Turn out updates twice a year. Charge for new features. Updating should be able to be easily done in a similar fashion to a normal hotsync. I know the low end Palm's OS can't be updated which isn't right.
A better hotsync manager. Unfortunately one needs to be logged in to their computer to hotsync. Give us a better hotsync application (for at least Mac and MS Windows, GNU/Linux being a real plus) that allows users to hotsync so long as their machine is running.
Use XML for all data files and allow the Palm to be mounted as an USB drive (like the T5). If someone wants to write a different hotsync application make it easy for them. If you're lucky someone might just come up with a great FOSS replacement which you can adopt and save some R&D money. XML allows programmers to easily integrate their network or web based applications with the user's data. Imagine updating your schedule via the web and (assuming you have an active wireless network connection) hitting hotsync to update. FOSS is your friend, not the enemy.
The same case for all models except the phone. The current Tungsten E / T5 case fits well in one's hand. The "one case" concept allows third parties to standardize on one size. One size means less R&D and lower cost per unit sold.
HyperCard. Ok, not HyperCard but something just like it. The early days of HyperCard were wild. For the first time the common person had access to a simple to use RAD environment. Sure, many of the stac
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
1. .NET Compact Framework - I can use the same code I use for the .NET applications I use.
2. ActiveSync - Keeps my data synchronized in real time. Not just when I push the sync button.
Hey Anonymous Coward, it seems that you can't even spell your own name :-).
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Which Palm?
PalmSource have developed a new OS which has been out for-frigging-ever. OS6, or Cobalt, would be a very nice thing, if someone would take it up.
So the OS certainly isn't stagnant.
PalmOne, on the other hand, have expressed no interest in releasing any Cobalt-based devices for a very long time.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I want to buy a Zaurus, and as soon as I can justify it, I will.
What I really want though, is one of the clamshell models to get Bluetooth. I'm not particularly keen on buying a CF Bluetooth adapter and then having to manually configure it.
But actually, how is the process of configuring these things anyway? Is the hardware support for CF devices more or less equivalent to the hardware support of the USB devices on PC? If I can buy pretty much any CF Bluetooth adapter off the shell and configure it in the same way I configured my USB adapter on my Linux desktop, I might be a little more keen on this option.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I keep hearing all this talk on how PocketPC is more versatile, but not once have I actually heard someone explain an application which can be done on PocketPC but not on Palm.
As a Palm user, I'm really eager to know about this, because I was having a tough decision picking between the two, and in the end I discovered that both units had about the same capabilities, with the lack of one feature in Palm OS (multithreading) which I still don't consider to be very useful in a PDA.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
1) PDA Classic, (2) PDA-Phone, (3) PDA-Email, and (4) PDA-Wireless. Palm seems to be moving from type 1 to type 2, while RIM is focused on Type 3, and WINCE on type 4. I think for many of us, our expectation was for PALM to do #1, and #3/#4 (both email and real 802.11x wireless). Type 2 is really where Handspring went, and their acquisition meant Palm became mainly #1 and #2. So the real question is can one vendor do all types?
My IPAQ does 1,3, and 4 all minimally well. The lack of SSL, webmail, and VPN support in Pocket Outlook is what kills #3- and limits me to using Activesync for e-mail....on the plus side, at least it's all against the same copy of Outlook.
I've also seen WinCE based phones that do 1, 2, and 3 very well- and a new IPAQ that does all 4 (yes, it actually has digital PCS, Bluetooth, and 802.11g radios built in- but it's got a sucky battery life).
However, I'd emphasize that Pocket Outlook and Pocket IE are the weak points in this chain- their lack of support of some very basic protocols and markup languages are a big hole.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The only thing worse than Windoze sucking badly on your desktop, is Windoze sucking while following you around.