Rumor: Palm to Release a Linux Feature Phone?
LinuxDevices.com is reporting that Palm may ship a Linux powered feature phone by years end, say sources close to the company. The article claims the device will be powered by Wind River Linux, not PalmSource's version of Palm OS for Linux.
This development would certainly be a surprise given that Palm CEO Ed Colligan recently remarked at the unveiling of the Windows Mobile Treo press conference that "We [Palm] doesn't need another operating system." Furthermore, Palm's senior VP of marketing Ken Wirt was recently quoted as saying "We are waiting for PalmSource to port the Palm environment to Linux before moving away from Palm OS 5. [...] It will take us about a year to build a product on Palm OS for Linux after they come out with it."
Open jobs listings on Palm's website indicate the company has been preparing for Linux development for a new generation of Palm devices. Back in August, the company had as many as 13 open engineering positions related to Linux. Wind River's website even lists Palm as a customer.
PalmSource has been busy working on its own version of Palm OS for Linux for feature phones and smartphones. However, the company does not plan to have the new operating systems ready until the summer of 2006 at the earliest.
Thanks to David Beers for the tip.
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RE: Good or Better of
That and the question whether this would be a Treo or (as LinuxDevices suggested) some kind of feature phone--those are the burning questions. Their feature phone argument isn't making a lot of sense to me, but this whole thing is pretty crazy sounding.
It's actually the weirdest Palm news I've heard in a very long time.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Good or Better of
Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: Good or Better of
You can say that again...
"People who think they're smart annoy those of us who are."
RE: Good or Better of
Treo 700w (Q1)
www.palm.com/us/images/company/about_feature_photo.jpg" rel=nofollow target="_new">http://palmone.r3h.net/www.palm.com/us/images/company/about_feature_photo.jpg
Treo 800w (Q2)
http://www.churchoflivingfaith.com/images/treo800w.jpg
Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: Good or Better of
RE: Good or Better of
I'm guessing this is some kyocera or samsung phone, or maybe moto.
--
http://www.arpx.net/article.php/top_10_palmos_applications - my top 10 apps
Clarification
https://portal.windriver.com/news/press/pr.html?ID=2662
...states that a commercial grade version of Linux will be ready by November 2005. The way I'm reading this is that the back end of PalmLinux is now approaching a finished stage and that a *prototype* device may now exist within the company. My guess is that the Palm overlay for this version of Linux isn't ready yet at a commercial level and that the PalmWind device won't be ready until at least spring of next year
RE: Good or Better of
Inquiring minds wanna know!
And...
Why does ANYONE think PALM would be doing PALMSOURCE'S developing in Linux for PALM'S use? Why not think instead that PALM looks at how deficient PALMSOURCE is/has been and simply said "Hey! We modified PalmOS extensively ourselves! We can go it alone with Linux, too!"?
RE: Good or Better of
Maybe the same reason people always get confused about Linux. The name is used in two ways (one correct and the other loose) and people--especially in the press--get them mixed up all the time. Correctly speaking, Linux is not an operating system. It's a kernel on which you can build an operating system. But people also often refer to operating systems built on Linux as being "Linux."
We're told that Palm OS for Linux is designed to be kernel-agnostic so it can run on different Linux kernels (including, theoretically, a kernel with patches maintained by WindRiver). However, as far as I can see, WindRiver's "commercial grade Linux product" is an operating system, or "platform"--i.e. it's a substitute for Palm Linux, not a potential ingredient.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Good or Better of
You misread the posts, fool. :)
Palm Linux refers to a Palm API compatability layer that is expected to be able to run on a number of different Linux distros. Wind River linux is rumored to be one of the distros Palm Linux will be built on: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6692714302.html
Ergo, any specific device may run *both* Palm Linux and Wind River Linux. Fool. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
Out of left field
I can fantasize, but to be honest I'm really wondering how credible this source is.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Out of left field
Is this just the author confusing Palm and Palmsource or is there some implied relationship or collaboration between Wind River, Palm, and Palmsource on this phone?
RE: Out of left field
That certainly would be a great rationalization for accepting bill's $$$ to make a treo with a "start" button... :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Out of left field
RE: Out of left field
But seriously. No-one actually *pays* for wince, right? I mean, that should be really obvious.
This is easy to prove: m$ refuses to break out the wince numbers. If wince really was making any money, why would m$ be ashamed? :)
Of course, some "licensees" might have to pay a token amount per unit, for example around $5 for a unit priced at over $600. This is obviosly far less than cost, but still amounts to tens of thousands for many "licensees". The flip side is that m$ provides extensive "free" engineering support to licensees, completely offsetting the token abount per unit.
m$ isn't interesting in making money from Dell or HP on a per unit basis. m$ wants to capture the *market*. At the moment the market is owned by Palm, but m$ has been dumping cash into its money-losing wince business for years trying to capture market share.
The amazing thing is that despite competing for years against a convicted monopolist who is prepared to effectively dump billions of cash into licensees just to capture market share, Palm has still succeeded in developing a financially viable model, maintaining the largest user base, developer base, and application base in the market, and it continues to absolutely dominate the smartphone market.
Pretty cool, actually! :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Out of left field
Surur
I'm not the LEAST bit surprised
Back during the Access buyout news, I proposed a 3-tier strategy for Palm's lineup:
Basic PDAs: FrankenGarnet
Flagship PDAs and Treos: PLinux
Flagship Treo: WinMob
I never figured that Palm would necessarily go with PalmSource's Plinux exclusively. When the news of the hirings for Linux engineers emerged, I even suggested that Palm was going to attempt to go it alone with their "own" (kinda like IBm tried with the PC Jr.) Linux OS and/or buy the IP for Garnet & Cobalt from Access and try to meld it all into one big mobile OS, picking the best bits from each one.
This is going to only throw yet another monkeywrench into the devloper community. They would now have to conceivably support:
Garnet
Cobalt (assuming an Asian licensee ever ships a device)
Palm's Linux
PalmSource Linux
WinMob
This fragmentation is NOT a good sign for anyone other than Palm's short term sales outlook.
RE: Out of left field
This is going to only throw yet another monkeywrench into the devloper community
Not if it's a feature phone platform it won't. There won't be a developer community outside of Palm and the mobile operators.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Out of left field
No-one actually *pays* for wince, right?...This is easy to prove: m$ refuses to break out the wince numbers.
Actually, the Mobile and Embedded division, for which Windows Mobile is the major product, has revenue of about $280 million a year.
At the moment the market is owned by Palm
You never answered my question, D.O. Do you acknowledge that Windows devices outsell Palm, yes or no?
Kirvin 101
Don't waste your time. Kirvin realizes that he can't effectively debate, so he's resorted to his current "Dr Opinion" pseudonym. He thinks now he can post as many lies and insults as he wants now because he's "anonymous". Too bad his posts just make Palm/PalmSource look even more idiotic.
Kirvin is chickensh**
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: Out of left field
Let's just recap on the points you can't refute one more time:
(1) m$ refuses to break out the wince numbers, clearly demonstrating it is a money-losing business. :)
(2) Wince "licensees" pay a token amount at most, but m$ provides extensive "free" engineering support to licensees, so much so that in real terms m$ actually *pays* "licensees" to ship wince devices.
(3) m$ wants to capture the *market*. At the moment the market is owned by Palm, but m$ has been dumping cash into its money-losing wince business for years trying to capture market share.
(4) Palm has still succeeded in developing a financially viable model, maintaining the largest user base, developer base, and application base in the market, and it continues to absolutely dominate the smartphone market... all this despite the fact that Palm and PalmSource compete with a massive monopolist who is actually paying manufacturers to take it's product! Hilarious!
Go PIC! I love this place. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Out of left field
Congratulations D.O. Trolling at its finest. You make Palm supporters look real bad.
Oops, forgot the smilie :) Now I can say any bull I want, cant I? :)
Surur :)
RE: Out of left field
You make Palm supporters look real bad.
Which is obviously the whole point. I concluded long ago that Dr O = TVoR. Out of disappointment that Jeff Kirvin wouldn't let him crap all over the 1src forums TVoR figured he'd create his own caricatured "artists conception" of Jeff Kirvin right here. This is supposed to show how stupid people are to be enthusiastic about the Palm platform and to prove that when TVoR "isn't around" PIC gets taken over by these zombies.
Yes, he's that sick in the head.
At some point he'll probably get bored with this game and probably start posting as the old TVoR personality again. I'm not sure which is worse.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
Ryan, can you stop the LIES from Beersy and Dr Opinion?
Yes, he's that sick in the head.
At some point he'll probably get bored with this game and probably start posting as the old TVoR personality again. I'm not sure which is worse.
Beersy, if you really believe that, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were. (Unless, of course, YOU are helping Kirvin with these retarded Dr Opinion posts.)
Ryan can confirm that I'm posting from a (VERY) different location than your "friend", Doc Op. People like you and Kirvin try to get too clever for their own good and end up making all Palm supporters look bad. Stop posting obvious lies about me. Don't make me have to break my foot off in your a$$... Again.
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: Out of left field
It is almost but not quite entirely unentertaining in an amusingly sad and boring way.
RE: Out of left field
I'm actually starting to think D.O. is actually David Schlesinger. They both have the same level of paranoia regarding paid MS posters and poor connection with reality
e.g.
Interesting take on the situation. Let's see: All the PocketPC manufacturers on the planet, added up together, command no more than 20% of the PDA market share. Handspring, all by itself, has between 20 and 30%.Someone's getting their collective asses kicked, but it doesn't seem to be Palm.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=2296#21194
Surur
Linux Feature Phone
Or could it be that Jeff Hawkings mutterings about a "Secretive Third Business" have started to be unearthed?
There's certainly scope for Palm to shake things up now that PalmSource has been taken from the isolated limb Palm had left them on.
But remember... in this game, on this site, there's often smoke without fire!
Have a good weekend all,
KultiVator
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### Russian Doll Logic ~ 1+1+1+1+1 = 1 ###
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RE: Linux Feature Phone
Interestingly, if they are branching of into feature phones running Linux, which would explain explain the Linux job listings on Palm's site, does this mean Palm feels they could do the new OS thing better and faster than PSRC? Are they actually divorcing themselves from PalmOS?
Surur
RE: Linux Feature Phone
Yeah, obviously Palm has hacked together an entire Palm OS compatible linux distribution on the side. That makes perfect sense. Moron.
> "...Are they actually divorcing themselves from PalmOS?..."
Even more likely is that they are divorcing themselves from wince. Expect to see a news release to the effect of "we just couldn't bring ourselves to pollute our gorgeous Treo hardware with buggy wince garbage. At the last minute we decided to yank that lousy OS and ship with Linux instead." :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Linux Feature Phone
Its a bit senseless responding to your comments, but just to clarify, who says their new OS was POS compatible?
Surur
RE: Linux Feature Phone
What the article is saying is that palm started making this move long ago, just like WM move. Palmsource decided to follow, but it's gonna take time. In the meantime, Palm still has to make products.
So they've decided to go with a feature phone (that lacks the ability to install new apps).
Probably see PIM, Web browser, camera, maybe a media player. Then thats it, you get what Palm gives you. I can see how carriers would love it as it would reduce their support costs. No complaints of incompatibility.
RE: Linux Feature Phone
While I think this "leak" is highly dubious, I want to remind everyone that Palm OS for Linux is not the only Linux work that PalmSource has been up to. China MobileSoft had been working on a Linux feature phone platform well before they were acquired last December and PalmSource has said on more than one occasion that they were letting CMS continue to conduct this work since their business has been growing very nicely in China.
So, just because Palm OS for Linux isn't ready doesn't mean that PalmSource doesn't have a feature phone platform ready for Palm via their CMS subsidiary.
What doesn't jive, though, is that I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that CMS produced their own Linux distro and this news says specifically that Palm is using a Wind River distro. Still, Linux kernels are relatively substitutable, so Palm may have licensed the CMS Linux platform and switched out the kernel to get something they wanted from it (features or support from Wind River).
To those who keep asking "what's a feature phone?" the most salient factor that differentiates a feature phone from a smartphone is that feature phones do not allow users to install any 3rd party applications other than Java apps. It's conceivable (but still, I think, unlikely) that CMS or Palm have developed PalmOS-like PIM applications that run on a feature phone platform and sync with Outlook and/or Palm Desktop via SyncML. That was PalmSource's announced plan, but I'd be surprised if it was ready this soon.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Linux Feature Phone
It's called Marketing 101: "Compete where you have a competitive advantage". Palm's competitive advantage is its superior developer base, installed base, and huge application collcetion (dwarfing both wince and symbian combined).
Get with the program. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Linux Feature Phone
Surur
RE: Linux Feature Phone
Surur, I know this is embarassing, but you actually wrote: "...does this mean Palm feels they could do the new OS thing better and faster than PSRC? Are they actually divorcing themselves from PalmOS?..."
That's quite possible the single most stupid post on this entire story. And it was at 8pm. You can't even claim you'd just got back from clubbing, chasing babes, and smoking crack. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Linux Feature Phone
What OS obstacles are in the way of the Treo meeting the RIM Blackberry in a One-on-One market battle to the finish? Symbian, POS, and WinMob.
How might Palm once again have a hardware/software product over which they have complete control to be back on the very pinacle of a growing market? Buy writing their own Linux sollution for thier own phone. They couldn't buy back POS. They can't get control of Symbian and certainly not WinMob. But, all alone they can do a Linux phone that takes their newly admired Treo and offers 90% of what most users want to do with it.
I won't want one, but it might be quite nice.
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Good or Better of "good, better, and best" line of Palms