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3Com & Psion to Join Forces for Wireless Internet
A reader wrote to us with the news that Psion and 3Com have agreed to join forces against WinCE. Software will be portable to either platform - Psion's or PalmOS and they will continue to work more closely together. Psion has support already from the biggest cell phone people - Nokia included, a great starting position.
True, but the majority of current Psion devices are based upon the ARM 7100 running at relativly low speeds (16Mhz-36Mhz depending on the model). The Series 7 does have a StrongARM at 133Mhz, but like all similar devices, the typical use is the processor stalled as much as possible to conserve battery power. Running high MHz chips to emulate the dragonball doesn't seem like efficent usage of resources.
I am not a big fan of the windows 9x operating systems, mainly due to their lack of stability, and that fact that you cant do nearly as much with them as you can with linux. However, I really love my Philips Nino. Being able to read news on the fly, write mail, etc is a very nifty thing. Granted a palm can do pretty much anthing a nino can, but the impressive screen resolution on the nino lets me do minimalistic graphics design, then sync the file over to my windows box to do the real work in photoshop.
More on topic, I don't necessarily thing the cooperation will be a good thing. In trying to defeat one 'evil' (i.e. microsoft) Psion and 3com may be creating another evil. It is important to remember that all corporations are fundumentally out to make money, so an agreement between the two corporations is not going to be about bringing a better product to the user, its going to be about combining technologies to make a more attractive, and therefore more expensive one.
In the long run this may prove to be a good thing if it does provide more competition for either side, but I would be unhappy if either winCE or palm/psion continue to have an unequal share of the handheld market for the simple fact that compeption DOES force companies to implement better products.
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Is is just me, or does this article not really say that much? What, exactly, are the two parties going to be doing?
I'm *really* not convinced that apps can be made portable between the two - the EPOC SDK is extremely complicated, and although I haven't seen the PalmOS one I wouldn't have thought that they were at all similar. Perhaps the app engines could be made portable, but things like user interfaces would still be a problem.
Unless they use Java, which EPOC supports - does PalmOS?
Jon
http://www.epoczone.com/
Then, Microsoft is beginning to pick up on the embedded & hand-held markets, again. And they have some serious resources they can throw at things. If they break into the market, then it won't matter how good the alternatives are, they'll fail.
On the flip-side, if 3Com and Psion can pull this off, and deliver a coup de grace to Windows SE, that might deliver some HUGE shock-waves to the market, way beyond merely who controls that one sector. For Microsoft to admit defeat, even in an area they've never done well in, their image will be seriously damaged in -every- market. Once someone has been beaten, they lose the aura of invincibility, not just with that opponent, but with everyone. There would be a real danger of competitors in other markets taking the battle to Microsoft, rather than allowing themselves to be controlled and dominated.
Depending on how this turns out, it could be the end of 3Com & Psion, or the end of Microsoft domination in computing in general. In business, image is EVERYTHING. Who wins, wins big. Who looses, looses it all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
- Java for PalmOS
- More Java
- SSH and other crypto stuff for Palm Pilot
- There are free development tools for Linux
- One alternative to Grafitti (There are many)
- Tetris clone
Voice Reconition will come along when they make a mic input for the Palm.- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
I recently narrowly decided on the Qualcomm Thin Phone over the TouchPoint (actually made by Denso, but since no one here knows that name, they don't volunteer it.) Came down to thinness and cost (~$80 less) on the plus side, and smaller display and no vibrator on the minus side.
It also has a built-in web browser and optional data cable, which seems to be hard to get at the moment, but appears to have a DB-9 serial cable on the other end. What I'm curious about is what this thing looks like to the software - a direct serial link for PPP or CSLIP? A modem that ignores the dailing stuff? Is Sprint my wireless ISP now?
To the point, what do I have to do to get a wireless inet link through the ThinPhone working on my Caldera-powered Libretto?
If anyone out there's done this, I'd love to hear about it.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
As you can imagine, I have signed a non-disclosure agreement with momma-Nokia. However, I have found this excerpt from an article. It's not directly related to WAP, but it shows MS's attitude:
:o)
In significant contrast to recent mega deals,
Microsoft has just acquired STNC, a small 40 strong
British software company founded in 1993, based in
Bury St. Edmunds. No purchase price has been
announced.
Perhaps just a small deal on the side?
Not according to industry commentator
'Peter PDAntic'. He interprets the move, along with
the previous acquisition of Swedish company
Sendit as part of a deliberate strategy to control
the related middleware and pivotal enablers for
the Symbian Alliance's EPOC operating system,
which Gates has already declared to be one of
Microsoft's biggest threats.
PDAntic says Gates probably argues that if
Microsoft can't (yet) control or own the major
players of the Symbian alliance such as Nokia,
Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushits, then perhaps
they can buy as many as possible of the
middleware enablers. "Money, after all, does
talk", he says.
Davis Haskin of Allnet says STNC's products
(already available or under development) include
key parts of the EPOC operating system, especially
EPOC communications and browser code, as well
as WinCE software. STNC's Hitchhiker smart phone
platform includes a TCP/IP stack, a microbrowser,
e-mail support and other tools. Symbian has
recently licensed STNC's web browsing software.
MS got them just to piss off those who want to make WAP-based clients, including Nokia. However, Microsoft was very late and feet-dragging to join the WAP Forum (www.wapforum.org). It was not long ago when on our meetings we spoke about MS as "noticeably missing" from the WAP Forum. No wonder, they were pushing some proprietary protocols, and I have completely forgotten by now what they were. MS made some partnerships, but as we know, whoever is in bed with MS gets screwed. For MS partners, not to adopt WAP would be really screwy; WAP is taking the industry by storm and everyone and their dog is adopting and developing on it.
Another excerpt, this one a bit OT, but sweet:
According to Bloomberg, market consideration
of the Motorola results boosted optimism for
Nokia whose shares rose Euros 0.75 to
Euros 90.7.
But meanwhile, Finland's industry minister,
Erkki Tuomioja, is reportedly worried about Nokia.
According to Digital Strategies Europe, the
minister believes that Nokia may be a takeover
target for Microsoft.
The minister is said to be concerned that such a
move by Microsoft 'would be impossible for Nokia
and the Finnish government to resist' and any
such deal would seriously undermine the
Symbian alliance and Europe's chances of
overtaking the US in the ICT field.
Microsoft is said to be known to be increasingly
interested in Nokia's market, especially in the
WAP-enabled smart phones business.
MS's strategy: if you can't beat them, buy them
No wonder, since WAP is a very nice, open protocol suite modeled upon the Internet protocol stack.
Sigged!
I joined Nokia at the time they invested in Symbian, together with Ericsson and Motorola. (Note: Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson are the three biggest players in mobile phone market, and otherwise there is bloody competition between them.) I was/am a fan of Palm and so was a bit disappointed, believing Nokia would have been better off to invest in the Palm OS. OTOH, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola (and now Matsushita and Philips and who else..) know well where they put their money. They certainly wouldn't cooperate on a project if they weren't sure it's going to be turbogood, and strategially important.
Also, please note how Nokia has really *huge* know-how of embedded and special purpose OSs. I don't mean only the GSM (and nordic) phones, but also the multiprocessor/modular DX-200 switching platform.
So in the end Nokia decided to use Epoc *and* Palm OS. Why not? They are both great embedded OSs, efficient and well designed, and as such it's easily possible to find synergies.
I would also like to add that Nokia as a corporation doesn't like Microsoft. MS did some bad and ugly things to push their non-standards against WAP and have, quite simply put, annoyed a lot of people here. MS proved again to be full of sh*t, in every respect. That's (probably) one of the reasons Nokia chose Linux for it's multimedia set-top/wireless Internet access device.
And, just as another example, Linux and *BSD are meeting with less and less resistence in the corporation, you can see these boxes everywhere now! A good place to work for a nerd (which I am not (fingers crossed)).
Sigged!
CNET has a similar article here.
T.
I think the main point here is not about dominating the PDA field, it is about which operating system gets chosen for the mobile multimedia terminals. Face it, mobile wide-band technologies are here in 2-3 years. First there will be GPRS (GSM Packet Radio Service), which provides connectionless data transmission through GSM networks with a reasonable bandwidth. A couple of year from that, 3rd gen. mobile networks will be emerging, and they will provide 256 Kb/s - 2 Mb/s of bandwidth. Think about it, that will make continuous real-time multimedia streaming feasible. Streaming Mp3 or even MPEG4 to your mobile terminal! Now when you think that in the most advanced countries (Finland, that is), already 85% of the active population have cellular phones, and current mobile phones will be gradually upgraded to mobile multimedia terminals, dominance on that market begins to look pretty important. The PDA, or even the desktop market, seems almost insignificant in comparison. Since ALL of the major mobile players are with Symbian, and none (AFAIK) with Microsoft, it -- at the moment, at least -- seems like MS is missing their launch window to the major market of the future! Interesting, isn't it?
Heh, I'll say this for European standards (GSM) and general sloth-ity: we always take our time but we occasionally get it right
Or to be less jingoistic and slightly more accurate, my current combination of Psion 5 ("classic", if you will) and Ericsson SH888 has already allowed me to:
...And all without a cable (phone and Psion have an IR link)
(The astute will note that any GSM phone can be used for the last 2 although having a proper keyboard & screen makes it soooo much nicer)
HOWEVER (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) it all comes back to bandwidth. Oh, and cost.
GSM data rate is 9.6KBit/Sec. That's it, no more. It also costs upwards of 10p/minute to use (erm.. 16 of your American Cents, I believe). Checking my e-mail therefore takes about 5 minutes and costs 50 English pennies (around 80 cents).
Now, I'm not without my means, but you certainly can't call that mass-market web-on-the-go, wired for the next century technology, or rather you can but not at that cost.
So my take is that until we see some network technology that has some bandwidth AND is cheap to use (I await responses telling me how much better life is in other countries here), you can forget pervasive mobile telecoms.
The sermon:
The lord already gaveth the Palmtop, the Handheld OSes, and the Mobile Phone. But he giveth not the connectivity unto thine 'net.
--
The Rev. henley MPhil(Oxon) (Barking)
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy