Sony kills the Clie dead
By Peter Rojas 
posted February 22nd 2005 7:45AM
posted February 22nd 2005 7:45AM
The rumors that Sony is working on at least one new Clie handheld could still technically be true, but if it's going to happen they'll have to do it soon because they've just announced that they're going to completely kill off the Clie in July (they already pulled out of the US market last year). We're guessing they've decided to focus their energies on the PlayStation Portable, Sony Ericsson smartphones, and coming up with a worthy competitor for the iPod. Anyway, Sony'll keep providing parts and repair services for at least another six years or so, but PalmSource has officially lost yet another licensee for the Palm operating system.
Sony killed their own market by making their palm devices better and more functional as multi media players, game devices and a/v compnents. Makes sense... how they can focus in something that dosnt need a license from another company, like the PalmOS. They are their own entity, and like it that way.
When you think about it - the PSP is like a clie without the OS! :) Only more kickery'asser'er!
I know when I had my NX70v the PIM apps were the last thing I was concerned with except when connecting to the internet via WiFi.
Well ... like they say ... another one bites the dust!
And sadly PalmOne/PalmSource is not helping as well. I believe the first nail in the coffin was the move to separate into two entities. PalmOne becomes a distinct competitor to PalmOS licensee, and although its supposed to be a fair playing ground, people cannot help but feel that PalmOne would have special first-hand info from PalmSource.
This is much like how MS is being rapped for using unfair tactics via its OS/Apps combo. The only difference here is that MS succeeded while PalmOne/Source failed miserably.
If MS start making its own PCs, SmartPhones or PPCs, its partners will surely scream and possibly abandon ship like Sony is doing now.
PalmOne/Source, if you want your licensees to stay on, you gotta stop fighting with them for market. Concentrate on making the platform/OS work, and not trying to join the foray of massmarket devices.
Some people here seem to know what's going on with Palm.. please enlighten me.. what is Palm doing wrong? Palm seems to be a really well-designed, easy to use, robust OS, compared to MS bloatware, which requires much faster processors and memory to run. I've been using Palm since the first Handspring Visor, was drooling over the Clie's, and Palm seemed dominant then. So.. what happened to Palm?
Posted simultaneously... just to reiterate, what is wrong with the easy-to-use Palm software? Doesn't seem to need much more development already, and it's so much more stable than Windows. Why do people choose Pocket PC over Palm?
One immediate question is ... will PalmOne seize the Palm OS vaccuum in Japan? To my knowledge, no Palm OS device is readily available there other than Sony. Sony had a sizeable chunk of the PDA market that PalmOne could have possibly seized, were they ready or willing to try. Toshiba, Sharp and HP were all the majors I remember?
Another milestone in the evolution of PDAs (now officially dead) to smartphones (now rising). This is another sign that Palm is clearly restructuring its platform roadmap, and attaches little credence to maintaining its existing licensing agreements for its legacy OS.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
Quote: "PalmOne becomes a distinct competitor to PalmOS licensee, and although its supposed to be a fair playing ground, people cannot help but feel that PalmOne would have special first-hand info from PalmSource."
Uhh... that may have been the situation at Palm BEFORE the split into PalmOne and PlamSource but not now!! In fact, that was the whole point of the divesture!! Basically, you're abut 2 years late in that assestment which is totally irrelavant now. The whole point of of the split was so that palmsource could attract more lisencees. That may have been a failure in terms of handheld lisencees (with exception to minor players like Tapwave, Garmin, Aceeca etc),but PalmSource has been more successfull in attracting more smartphone lisencees. Besides, the future is in smartphones anyway...
Secondly, Sony may have ended its Clie line, but it still is a palmOS lisencee and still has a $20 million dollar investment in PalmSource that it made a couple years ago. I wonder what will happen with that?
What's wrong with the Palm OS? Been there and done that! The Palm OS is old news. Palmsource can't decide what they want, OS 5, Be OS or Linux. Sony won't have to pay royalities anymore to Palmsource. Tapwave is on life support and Garmin has switched to PPC.
I think PDA's are obsolete. In a few years, it will all be more advanced platforms, like iPod's, with PDA-type functions added in.
I was an early Palm adopter and really liked it for a while. But it got to be too much work to maintain. Palm made one DEADLY decision-- they never got the "sync" process to the point where it was easy or reliable. How many times did it stall, and I'd have to to re-do it over and over! And this with different models, attached to different computers. I want a PDA to SIMPLIFY my life-- not to complicate it! Let's not even TALK about PocketPC--ugghhh.
They should have implemented the Palm like it was a simple "USB Key storage" device. Then users could just use standard, reliable computer back-up software (of there own choice) to maintain their files. But, no, they had to screw it up. Idiots.
Yes, I think the whole point of what Snappy was saying was that is was SUPPOSED TO make it a level playing field, the splitting up I mean. But most Palm OS licensees still felt that PalmOne had an unfair advantage over them, and they fled the platform
As far as Palm being more stable and Pocket PC requiring faster processors than Palm, this is so not true. Although there is a common conception that Windows is less stable than the competing desktop operating systems, applying this logic to the completely different Pocket Pc operating system would be a folly. Pocket Pc is just as stable as Palm, if not more so, and I should no, considering that I am now on my third pocket pc in many years. As far as palm not needing as fast processors as pocket pc, have you looked at the latest palms? They seem to be all using the same fast intel processors as the pocket pc's. Well, that theory goes out the window.
well, as one of MILLIONS of Macintosh users, I wonder what I'll be forced to wait around for now. While I have nothing against MS (love Office) the fact tha their products do not work SMARTly with my machines means I'm F'ed.
have to agree with Tom Barta. The Handspring Visor is/was a comfy toy. Easy to use, but the sync function went belly up with 98SE and hasn't worked since. Yeah, seven years ago.
A CSR at Handspring told me six months ago they were "fading away". Looks like I'm back to writing notes on the kitchen wall by the land line.
Quote: "They should have implemented the Palm like it was a simple "USB Key storage" device. Then users could just use standard, reliable computer back-up software (of there own choice) to maintain their files. But, no, they had to screw it up. Idiots."
HELLO!!!!!!!!! That's the whole friggin point of drive mode on the PalmOne T5!! You can access the Nand storage and SD card as logical drive on any computer!!!
Boy am I behind the times. Here is it 3/9/05 & I am only now learning that Sony has ditched the Clie! I'm devastated! I don't want to end up keeping all of my information on a cell phone that can be hacked. I don't want to use a cell phone as a calculator, or an address book, or a date book. I want to use it when I need to make a call and nothing else! I don't give a crap about all the machinations with Palm vs Source or anything else. I love my Clie because instead of carrying around an address book, a calendar and a calculator in my already heavy purse, everything was compressed into one item that was easy to operate and easy to view.
Bummed! I am seriously BUMMED!