Palm OS Not Near End of Life

Some one please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the problem with Coblat though is that it PalmOS-Protein API program is built for pure a Cobalt device, and thus NEEDs to be recompiled for Cobalt over Linux system. That is to say, Cobalt program and COL one are not binary compatible. This will probably prevent PalmOS licensees, especially Palm. Inc, from releasing any pure Cobalt device. Otherwise, they must deal with the INCOMPATIBILITY issue when customers upgrade from a pure Cobalt device to a COL one. However, Linux program CAN run on Cobalt over Linux if it has no UI or if the developer ports its UI part to Cobalt. However one possible solution for devs though is to just continue support 68k apps since PACE should be supported on both Cobalt and PL?

What I wonder though is how long Palm keeps juggin along with frankengarnet? In the short, will Palm just continue it's experimentation with WM Treo etc until PL arrives. The wild card is how long can Palm stretch out frankengarnet in these next two years? Can they wait that long? Could there be some short term advantage of using Cobalt in the interim?

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Gaurav

>>>>Palm Linux won't matter even when it does arrive. The market has already decided what it wants.

It has? So that would mean the Symbain is the OS the market wants for smartphones right?

The truth is that we are still in a very early stage of a huge land rush in the burgeoning feature phone and smartphone markets. Symbain has the lead right now, but that is in no way garranteed in the future. There are three major platforms competing in this market: Symbian, WM, and Linux (with Palm Linux as possbile subset). WM has hardly won anything here yet...

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Gaurav

> "...I expect Palm to integrate Windows Mobile in its handheld line starting early next year..."

Despite the fact that Palm's CEO has explicitly said that they will not do this. DO you realize that CEOs of public companies are not allowed to lie about big stuff like that? :)

> "...My bet is that WinMob will replace PalmOS on Palm's high-end devices like LifeDrive and business-centric products..."

There is a bell-curve describing the distribution of IQs. Apparently you're solidly propping up the bottom end. :)

> "...The market has shifted to Windows Mobile..."

That's simply absurd. Wince has a tiny installed base, fewer good applications, and while some current devices might be comparable with the top of the line Palm OS devices in some respects, the horrific problems users are having with the new wince version are certainly not going to win over any converts. On the contrary... wince users will be flocking to the TX just to get some stability (and the ability to hotsync properly). :)

> "...Palm isn't going to continue basing its entire product line on a declining platform segment just for kicks..."

Now you're contradicting yourself! First you say they'll switch to wince, a declining platform segment, then you say they won't? Everyone knows that wince is losing money -- how long will m$ tolerate that kind of failure?

Look for wince to be obsoleted within 18 months and replaced with an XP mobile derivative. That's the only way m$ can possibly hope to compete with linux in the mobile space: by trying to get XP developers onto the platform. So again, why would anyone move to a clearly obsolete platform like wince? :)

> "...The market has already decided what it wants..."

The market wants Palm OS. The market wants the Palm TX. M$ will pay millions to continue to try to shove wince down their necks, but hell, it hasn't worked so far, now has it? :)

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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

You can't build a reasonably sized handheld running XP using current technology. Period. Hell, Intel is trotting around a concept design for an XP based handheld, and despite having a huge design and construction budget, the thing is enormous. Maybe in 3-5 years, it will be practical, but not right now.

Just wanted to clear that up so that nobody mistook DO's over-the-top bombast for actual fact.

I still take one thing away from the original article, which is that they will be focusing much more on feature phones than smartphones. Another article also implied the are developing specifically for the Japanese Docomo network (which makes more sense of their spending, they have a guaranteed buyer of their product already), and that their product may not be distributed to the rest of the world as readily.

BTW, the "very early stage of a huge land rush"-meme is a kirvinism. If you look at DOS and Windows, the winners and losers are decided very early, after which a network effect locks them into the market for decades afterwards, from where they can only be unseated by the application of huge amounts of capital.

Surur

Symbian smartphone marketshare is grossly overstated. I wouldn't accord Symbian more than 20% of current sales. Nokia artificially inflates Symbian numbers by using their Series 60 software on their glorified camera phones: 7 MB of memory, no touchscreen, no office applications, and an MMC slot under the battery don't make for a real smartphone. They've come out with a few interesting models, but the large majority of their market share is a phantom. Walk up to people who own a Series 60 phone and ask them what operating system they're on, or when the last time they installed software was. According to surveys, upwards of 90% of them will say "Huh?"

In any event, I think that the so-called "feature phone" market is over rated as well. In such a competitive arena, with profit margins so razor-thin, I suspect that most phone manufacturers will prefer to whomp up their own software rather than take out of their profit margin to license someone else's. Witness Linux, which is free to use and can be mutilated into whatever the phone maker wants it to be. The real money to be made is in smartphones.

AdamaDBrown wrote:
Symbian smartphone marketshare is grossly overstated. I wouldn't accord Symbian more than 20% of current sales. Nokia artificially inflates Symbian numbers by using their Series 60 software on their glorified camera phones: 7 MB of memory, no touchscreen, no office applications, and an MMC slot under the battery don't make for a real smartphone. They've come out with a few interesting models, but the large majority of their market share is a phantom. Walk up to people who own a Series 60 phone and ask them what operating system they're on, or when the last time they installed software was. According to surveys, upwards of 90% of them will say "Huh?"

I'm not sure who you think you're arguing with. My point was that however big Symbian OS is right now, Surer's vaunted network effect isn't going to keep it from taking some serious heat in the next few years from Microsoft and Linux. In fact, there are indications that that erosion has already begun: http://www.mobilepipeline.com/news/172300427.

It's not at all clear that Microsoft is Symbian's biggest worry, though. Despite having no real application stack to speak of (yet) Linux is growing quite a bit faster as a smartphone platform than Microsoft and by some measures has already passed it by: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8804000399.html. So much for Surer's theory that it takes massive capitalization to unseat a dominant platform.

The real money to be made is in smartphones.

Eventually you will be right. For now smartphones are still a tiny percentage of the market--less than 5% of the feature phone market. Which is why Palm is still scrapping while Nokia is raking it in (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4360392.stm). I'm not sure why you thought this was relevant to the discussion but if you're seeing a glimpse of the opportunity here for ACCESS I think you're on the right track.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Valid point David. I would counter that:

a) Symbian does not exhibit the platform effect due to not emphasizing interoperability. Each phone is a new phone, and you are starting from scratch. Its not a real platform yet.

b) Linux IS massively capitalized. I'm sure you would agree the Linux kernel is worth billions, and every cent of that was either from companies paying developers, donating code, or the actual sweat of volunteers who were either out of work or could be using their skills to earn real money elsewhere. So there is a lot of money behind Linux, just more diffusely. The 300 million paid for PSRC for their Linux efforts is just another example.

For a recent example of network effect you only have to look at the Ipod. You have the Itunes store (which can only work with Ipod's), the Ipod docks, the Ipod car kits, piles of Ipod accessories, the free Ipod media coverage and hype. Once you collect a few accessories and a large collection of songs on Itunes its going to be very difficult to justify upgrading to Creative mp3 player.

Surur

MS clearly prefers locking people into one of their cash cows (exchange/office) vs a source of negative revenue (win ce). This does not negate the thesis however.

Maybe of the Universal Connector was actually universal people would be a lot less inclined to jump ship due to both a software AND hardware investment.

Some of the network effects Win CE has going for it are:
1) Made by Microsoft, therefore association with a successful entrenched product.
2) Familiarity with the windows interface for newbies.
3) The same tools and API for the desktop and mobile devices (for a large part)
4) Compatibility between devices relatively good (compared to the various versions of the UI of Symbian and Linux, and the previous incompatible versions of Palm).

So yes, the desktop is being leveraged for the mobile device, but thats a pretty big advantage.

Surur

Your reasoning is in error, as Win CE has only increased in marketshare over the years, coming from dead behind. It recently surpassed POS marketshare, but it has been growing for a long time.

If any narrowing in differences took place, it wasn't that WM devices became dramatically better (in battery life, size or stability) but that POS devices became dramatically worse (e.g. battery life of weeks became 3-4 days). In a way the Z22 signifies a return to POS roots.

I still think the items listed played a role in WM success.

Surur

It's not at all clear that Microsoft is Symbian's biggest worry, though. Despite having no real application stack to speak of (yet) Linux is growing quite a bit faster as a smartphone platform than Microsoft and by some measures has already passed it by: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8804000399.html. So much for Surer's theory that it takes massive capitalization to unseat a dominant platform.

I don't think much of Linux as a "smartphone" platform either, at the moment. For one thing, many of the Linux "smartphones" suffer from the same problem as the Series 60 phones: they're not real smartphones, but they're counted as such because they have an OS.

Secondly, Linux will never have a solid software base and user experience without a strong, de facto standard for implementation. The completely free-form open source approach works great for some things, but when you're trying to get software to run across devices, you need standards for things like APIs, interface, resolutions, etcetera. Without one particular Linux version rising to dominance, that won't happen. So for now, in my opinion, the only real smartphone platforms are Palm, Windows, and Symbian UIQ.

Surer wrote:
Canalys numbers for Q3 2005 should be out soon, and will make interesting reading.

What would qualify as interesting for you? Canalys seems to exaggerate the Symbian dominance--at least in comparison to other analysts. In Q2 they had sales of the Nokia 9300/9500 alone roughly equaling sales of all Windows "converged devices" combined and Symbian occupying fully 75% of this market.

I don't expect Microsoft's movement into Symbian's territory is going to be anything terribly dramatic. What'll be interesting is what happens with mobile Linux one year, two years from now.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Masamune wrote:
While some of the above statements regarding Series 60 were true a while ago (limited in ability and no knows of them), it can't be said now.

Yeah, his figures were outdated and he obviously hadn't looked at any Series 60 phones in a while. My Nokia 6620 is as capable as any Palm device I own, it's just more phone-centric. You give up the big high-resolution screen and pen input in exchange for solid multi-tasking, niceties like the vibrating alarm and voice recorder, flawless Bluetooth, and a very small, light form factor. A lot of people seem to like that.

It's hard to switch to Series 60 if you've been a Palm user, because it really doesn't have the ease of use--there's a lot of clicking you have to do to accomplish anything. And it's not something you'd want to use for editing documents and such. I still strongly prefer Palm OS, but for the time being Series 60 seems to occupy the sweet-spot for most of the world's smartphone users who don't care much about 3rd party applications.

I don't think this kind of smartphone will always be the sweet spot, though. The vision that Microsoft and Palm have of smartphones as mobile computing platforms is the future, IMO.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

TVoR wrote:
Or has Microsoft pulled another fast one and will now limit MS Exchange support to the Windows Mobile version of the Treo?

Of course Palm doesn't need Microsoft's permission to support push email from MS Exchange on the Palm OS Treos. All they'd need to do is license one of several existing 3rd party solutions from Intellisync, Visto, ExtendedSystems, Consillient, etc.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

>>>Its almost feature phone territory...

Thank you for stating the OBVIOUS!

Umm...OF COURSE THIS IS A DESCRIPTION OF A FEATURE PHONE! PalmSource prior to the Access acquisition had already stated that they were working on a Feature Phone product to be released prior to Palm Linux. In fact, since the acqusition of CMS, they have already been offering a feature phone product called mFon.

But feature phones are a totally distinct market from Smartphones and this will not affect the development of Palm Linux or whatever the OS will be called...

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Gaurav

I think the real question here is if Access ONLY sees PalmLinux as a closed smartphone OS. I don't think this article answers that question. In my opinion, Access can't EOL the current Palm OS variants soon enough, if they build and provide a good PalmLinux product to replace them at that same time.

Do you think PalmSource bought Be OS and all Be Inc's assets and employees just to do nothing with them? Cause that's what they did. If you know anything about software development work, you know that it's highly unstable, and when directives come down from the top no one knows what can happen. Fortunately, it seems that Access is letting PalmSource maintain their present projects, though there's no way of predicting the future.

Ditto, I'm game for linux...in a way

Also, why do I think I have heard this news before?

Granted, my software won't work without an emulator, but linux can be okay as long as the user interface remains as simple as the one that makes me stick with Palm OS in the first place. I don't want the colorful start menu style of Win PPC, just basic backgrounds...well now a couple of pictures on the main screens for a modest touch. Decent or better handwriting recognition is a must.

For all we know, maybe it'll all be the same with the difference being with the core programming being linux based, perhaps like the Macintosh system changing for intel processors while being the same operating system we have come to know and love.

Worst case scenario-- grab the latest and greatest palm OS and hang on for dear life.