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The End of PalmOS?

Posted by Zonk on from the where-do-we-go-from-here dept.

SLT writes "According to Engadget, PalmSource was purchased by Access, a Japanese cell phone software company known for their NetFront browser. What does this mean for the future of Palm?" More coverage at LinuxDevices and Reuters. From the Reuters article: "Japanese software developer Access Co. said on Friday it would make U.S. software developer PalmSource Inc. wholly owned in a 34.4 billion yen ($311.3 million) cash deal to strengthen its development of software for handheld devices. Access will pay cash to shareholders of PalmSource, which will be later absorbed by Access' U.S. unit Apollo Merger Sub Inc., Access said in a statement."

8 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Th End of PalmOS? by Karma_fucker_sucker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hardly. It'll just be in more devices. And the Palm handheld will just morf. OTOH, I think we may see $20 organizers or cheaper given away with other products. Kind of the way MP3 players are being given away these days.

    --
    Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
  2. the end is neigh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    it's just my .02, but...

    The end may be a bit of hyperbole, although PalmSource has made some historical blunders which contributed to its demise (and I love thier devices, and have had them since the very beginning):

    1.) Basically did not update the core OS between 1997 and 2004. Version 5.x is bascially 3.x with color and a network stack shimmed in. A lot changed over those seven years, and the OS did not evolve as well as it could have. They rested on thier laurels, much like Apple did during the Scully era at Apple, releasing new models every 8 months but not really improving the core operation.

    2.) They released the big new version (6.0.) in late 2003, and no devices were ever released with it. This was a huge mistake, and points to poor partnerships (ISV and others) and planning. No other company in history has released an PDA OS that was never implemented on a retail device.

    3.) They released version 6.1 late last year, and again, nearly a year later, there are no devices running it. Again, big problem.

    Too bad the mutual admiration society that exists in Palm senior mangement was blind to their basic business folly.

    1. Re:the end is neigh... by NuShrike · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What happened recently is that PalmSource owned the PALM brand and sold it 'back' to PalmOne, so it can rename itself Palm again. The original Palm had split into two companies with one focusing on the hardware, and the other focusing on the OS with the ability to sell PalmOS to anybody, respectively.

      Some have said this was one expensive buyback of a name originally owned, but I'm guessing it was to throw money at PalmSource where the stock has been eroding to nothing since the split.

      So after still two companies of Palm (aka PalmOne formerly known as Palm) and PalmSource, and now only just Palm except they don't own their OS anymore.

      Hindsight now I think the split was extremely pointless and expensive, and not keeping the original founders around to keep the innovation up even more stupid.

      Considering Access's history of 'great' changes and innovation, I have even less confidence they will be able to do anything with the OS except embed their browser more deeply and try to sell that unchanged for a few years.

  3. Re:According to the Trolls by Koiu+Lpoi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Web Server for Palm OS

  4. Well, now they own BeOS... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...how much do they want for it? I'm sure that a lot of people would be willing to pay for BeOS to be open sourced. I would pay $200 for the BeOS code to be released under a BSD license. How many more people do they need to pay the same amount before it becomes worth their while, financially speaking? I doubt they actually wanted BeOS when they bought PalmSource, after all.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. Maybe Linux? by gregarican · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had read somewhere that the PalmOS might move to a Linux base. That would be great since I'm currently working on some Linux-based Qt GUI projects that run on the Sharp Zaurus. If I could port these over to a Tungsten so much the better for getting my sales force to adopt it!

  6. dang. by kisrael · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Palm had such a nice OS. It was such a friendly, crisp, easy interface...so much better than the attempts to scale shoehorn in the Windows desktop that WinCE was pursuing.

    I still love my Sony Clie...320x320 screen, good battery life, nice UI. (On the other hand...the 4k memo limit and even smaller clipboard ALWAYS seemed gratuitous to me.)

    Personally I thought the writing was on the wall once they had to switch to Graffiti 2...I've only dabbled with it, but for people accustomed to Graffiti (an idea it took me a while to warm to) it's jarring. And tht Xerox "unistrokes patent" lawsuit was SUCH CRAP...Graffiti is so much better than those stupid squiggles that didn't even look like any human alphabet.

    Feh. Hopefully when its time to upgrade I can find some kind of Palm work alike. And hopefully whatever I switch to can import Palm data; I love that I have my schedule going back to 1997 riding around on my hip, not to mention assorted memos, contacts, and todos...

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  7. Palm has been dying for a long time by poopie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I maintain that Palm has never really done a good job at much of anything and that their pinnacle was the release of the Palm V.

    Microsoft's inability to compete with a mobile OS that worked well on low-spec hardware, and the WinCE hardware vendors' inability to make good portable hardware really was the factor that kept Palm alive so long.

    Palm's ability to release new versions with differerent amounts of ram or different case colors can hardly be considered as innovative.

    Palm's inabliity to bundle wireless sooner is inexcusable.

    Palm's purchase (back) of Handspring for the Treo 600 just proved they didn't have a good new product. ... and then they found out that all Treos have a shielding problem that cause them to start buzzing!

    The fact that Palm has never released a real successor to the Tungsten T|3 is painful to all longtime faithful Palm power users.

    The PalmOS6 fiasco... It must have been even worse than I could imagine because even Palm didn't want it.

    The LifeDrive. Never has a machine with a 416mhz cpu seemed so slow! Hey, let's make all I/O go through a hard drive and let's not include an effective disk cache! I'm sure people won't mind waiting 3 minutes to reset, and I'm sure our power users won't mind STARING AT A FRIGGING BLANK SCREEN FOR 40 SECONDS WHILE THEY TRY TO SWITCH APPS! It makes me feel like an idiot for having purchased your product every time I switch apps.

    Palm, I was your best advocate, and I don't know how you could have disappointed me more.

    Let's hope that someone else can succeed where you failed.