PalmSource getting bought by….Access? UPDATE: Confirmed!
posted Sep 9th 2005 12:29AM
Haven't been able to confirm this, but we've just received a report that Access, a Japanese company that makes
software for mobile phones, has successfully raised the financing needed and has made a bid to scoop up
PalmSource for the princely sum
of ¥30 billion (just over $270 million). Why? Well reportedly Access is looking for a way to expand the market for its
cellphone browser (which is currently used by many of DoCoMo's FOMA 3G phones), and since both Symbian and Windows
Mobile are largely closed off to them they've apparently decided that what they need is to have their own operating
system. And that's where PalmSource comes in — the company has been struggling lately, and the idea here is that Access
will market the OS, complete with Access software, to Asian OEM manufacturers (which is supposedly PalmSource's
strategy too, but whatever). We don't know yet whether this is for real, but stranger things have happened, we'll say
that.
[Thanks, Zubon]
UPDATE: Confirmed! Access just issued a press release minutes ago. The deal is for $311.3 million in cash. No clue yet how this deal will affect Palm, PalmSource's sibling which got the hardware part of business after the two companies split up in 2003. Reuters has the story here.
Sure, ACCESS for us CLIE users *hello, we are still out there* MAKERS of NETFRONT... *sigh*
HUH?
So PalmSource is still alive? Who knew?
Where were those screenshots of Windows Mobile running on the Treo again?
Is this the same access who made the browser for the PSP?
That's cool. It's not like anything PSP related is going to come out of this, but still, um, cool.
What bastard updated Wikipedia while I was doing it?
Guess Palm is now going to be a Windows Mobile hardware developer. So long PalmOS...
I'll add that NetFront is the browser used in firmware version 2.0 of the PSP.
Also, "zubon" means "pants."
Great move on their part. They have a browser that is mostly closed off from the mainstream, so what do they do? Add it to an operating system that is increasingly closed off from the mainstream.
I think this is the beginning of the end for the PalmOS. The OS is now going to merely be a vehicle for a particular browser. Great.
That being said, maybe these guys can add some focus and direction to the PalmOS. I think it lost any real sense of focus in the late 1990's. It was a cheap, simple PDA that did as little as possible. Surely they could make some meaningful progress in this many years?
What does this mean to Palm? Will they still be able to license the PalmOS, or will they have to switch to Windows PocketPC/Mobile, or develop their own OS? If it's the second choice, then I think we can kiss competition in the PDA OS market goodbye.
But also, what does this mean for the PalmOS? Perhaps this purchase by Access will make PalmOS more widespread? Hell, maybe we'll even see Palm Smartphones in the future.
I hope that Linux version of PalmOS that PalmSource was working on isn't dead...
wtf... I hope they don't kill off the (artist formaly known as) Palm OS.
I think i'll go hug my Treo now...
Timmay
This is great news for PalmOS. I use NetFront on my Sony Clie TH-55 and it's really a well-constructed application. I'm sure that ACCESS will be good stewards of the PalmOS - and maybe they'll cancel that Linux nonsense that was going on.
God knows PalmSource was going nowhere before, so maybe this will be the start of a turnaround.
Hope for the best, brace for the worst.
Here's a crazy thought: what if they bought PalmSource because they think they can fix PalmOS Cobalt? Though, I think Linux is a better long-term solution, because it runs on far more hardware than Cobalt ever would.
"$311.3 million in cash"- nice
Truly tragic news I think but I guess my vision of PalmOS was much greater than those internally. I was hoping we would see at least the first Palm over Linux release before they were sold. Oh well...
I still think porting Palm apps on top of other Linux systems besides PDA/Smartphones was the best direction to go for PalmSource. They focused so much on the "small device market" defined as a PDA or a Phone which was never going to allow them to grow as an independent organization. I'm not saying that the "small device market" is saturated but it is rather limited with high concentrated competition (Symbian, RIM and Microsoft). People want synergy between virtually everything now a days and they could have really capitalized on this to other business avenues.
For example, think of what could have been done with the vast Palm apps on top of TiVo. It really could have made TiVo a much greater device for living rooms that Windows Media Center (using the remote almost just like the 5-Way rocker)....
I was so jazzed at trying to make that project work as it would have allowed a true integration between your smartphone, your computer and your living room (and compete against MS)! It would also have been an awesome extension of TiVo's HME project with endless options for consumers and developers.
Integration with Linux systems in cars was another good example. The key was to allow synchronization between your "Palm-enabled" devices to give your digital life a common theme and seemless intergration through bluetooth or other transports.
I guess I was dreaming but I had so many plans on what PalmOS could have done as an extended service of Linux....
Liam, who makes netfront? When I open up my "About PSP" screen it says "netfront by access co., ltd. Netfront is trademark of access co., ltd."
I am thoroughly confused.
hmmm. http://www.access.co.jp/english/products/nf.html
I was right. w00t! can I get a job at engadget? I'm good with the reading and stuff!
PalmSource dead? Well... I'm not entirely sure about that.
a. Just because Palm is releaseing a Windows Mobile based Treo doesn't mean they'll stop shipping PalmOS based devices.
b. Even if Palm stops shipping PalmOS based devices for their SmartPhones, who cares? While Treos are great phones, their sales numbers aren't as high as the numbers for phones in Japan and China.
c. Didn't PalmSource recently purchase / merge with China Mobile? (http://www.palmsource.com/press/2003/120803_chinamobile.html)
d. The strategy of running PalmOS on top of Linux doesn't mean that PalmOS is going away. Before it ran on Linux, it was running on top of another operating system called AMX. There are thousands of PalmOS apps out there (some of them are even worth running.) Maintaining compatibility with older APIs will be PalmSource's way of telling it's developer community that it's easier to port to the new PalmOS APIs (which run on Linux) than to port to Windows Mobile. Bottom line... changing the underlying OS for the PalmOS frameworks is not that big of a deal.
From a technology perspective:
* PalmSource is taking their UI and app frameworks and having them run on Linux. It's not that unusual a move. Apple did this with the move from MacOS-9 to MacOS-X and more apropose, this is what Qualcomm is doing with BREW. (http://www.qualcomm.com/ir/ppt/ij_london111704.pdf and http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2005/050505_linux_sc.html)
* After the APIs have been ported, you'll hopefully get the stability that comes from a mature code base like Linux or Symbian. Windows Mobile, based on WinCE 4.1 or 5.0, is not as mature. To be sure, all this monkeying around about moving APIs from one operating system (with a monoprocess space) to another (with full memory protection) is going to be an issue for the first couple of revs. If they do it right, they'll end up with something more stable than Windows Mobile or Qualcomm BREW.
From a business perspective:
* The "beauty" of your OS is not as important as certain business-related features. Your OS only needs to be "good enough" to allow developers to develop their applications. The OS only needs to be "good enough" so as not to upset the user with constant reboots. I demand that my phone last several days between reboots (I carry a T610 as a daily driver.) I have friends with 6315's that are okay with rebooting twice a day.
* What features are you going to get? I've heard rumors that the new PalmOS phone will ship with QT libraries. If you're a Linux developer and you can easily port to a PalmSource phone, that greatly enhances the number of apps you can run. The PalmSource biz-dev guys can parlay this into a win by focusing on corporate customers who are comfortable with open source and have a need for a mobile platform.
* PalmSource / Access have an international footprint in two of the most important mobile phone marketplaces: China and Japan. If they add Europe or Latin America, they could easily develop an international network of solution providers for their platform. Something we're not really seeing from Qualcomm, and seeing very slowly with Symbian.
* New Features : It's traditional to think of sales being driven by new features. While there's research that shows that some market segments are "experience" buyers, it's a lot easier to develop a sales campaign around the message "we have features the other guys don't." Were I a biz dev guy at PalmSource, I would:
a. be camped out in front of eBay's corporate headquarters, offering to trade an entry into chinese / japanese markets for Skype support on my new platform.
b. flipping through my rolodex trying to get the iQue people in touch with the location based services guys (ESRI?) and making sure that everything they need to build an application is on my platform.
c. Wi-Fi. I would make sure that wi-fi configuration on my device was at least as easy to configure as it is on my Mac laptop.
d. Support for corporate customers. In the corporate IT world, the truly new thing in the last couple of years is compliance. A lot of systems are being retrofitted to make it easy to audit them to prove they comply with corporate security policies (do a google search on SOX, GLBA, HIPPA, 21CFR11, CoBIT, etc.) If you had a feature that allowed me to turn on a "corporate compliance mode" where I could manage the system using my existing OpenView or CA-Unicenter infrastructure, I would be a very, very happy camper. And PalmSource doesn't have to be the one to write the code, they just have to have their engineers talk to engineers from HP or CA or IBM to find out what APIs their compliance auditing tools require.
But I digress...
Suffice to say, PalmSource is down, but I don't think they're out. Symbian and Windows Mobile look strong, but how do their sales numbers compare with Treos? Was PalmOS an integral part of the Treo's success or was it tangential? Can the Handspring team (now at Palm) do it again with a windows mobile based product? Treos were "high end" devices and we're starting to see a lot of very nice displays on the smaller phones; how long will the more expensive "smart phone" class machines like the 6315, Sidekick, Treo, etc. justify their higher prices?