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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."
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
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.
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.
. . . '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
Link ... they might be blocking links from /. ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well, Symbian started as EPOC, and is now son of EPOC. It's not dead!
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
If you want Symbian get a Nokia phone.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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
exactly what it needs to do very well.
Maybe the problem is the market is already saturated with Palm's that do exactly what their owners need to do? I mean, why would you buy a new palm if it has the same features you already have?
The advantage Microsoft has is that PocketPC hardware has followed Moore's law, and thus there is an insentive for consumers to keep purchasing new devices. By the same token, Moore's law has reduced the cost of the hardware (and end product) for Palms (the low end models) to such a level that it probably isn't nearly as profitable anymore. You can't even compare PocketPC's and Palm devices anymore, they are so much different from eachother in what they do it's unfair.
That's serious? Would you believe that even more then half a percent of Pocket PC users have done that?
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