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?
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
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?