PalmSource sends defiant message to Microsoft

 

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By Tim Danton

Posted on 11 Nov 2002 at 15:11

Today in London, PalmSource - the company behind the Palm operating system - took advantage of the release of Palm OS 5 (use link to other story) to unveil its vision for the PDA.

If PalmSource is right, within ten years Microsoft's Pocket PC may be a dim, distant memory, with the market flooded by a huge variety of devices based on the Palm OS.

Talking about the way the computing market moved from mainframes to personal computers, David Nagel, CEO of PalmSource, said, 'We think there may be another transition. We think the next kind of product will be Mobile Digital Devices.'

Much of this confidence is based on a recent survey of 10,000 people in five different countries, including the UK, US and China. Over 70 per cent of those surveyed expressed a strong interest in the mobile device market, with about half the interest in devices like notebook replacements, around half in communicators, while the traditional Palm - a standalone device that synchronises with a PC - is expected to reduce in popularity.

We've already seen Handspring Treos in the communicators ilk, with Kyocera having launched similar devices successfully in the US. With Nagel talking about ten more licensees yet to be announced, expect more communicators based around the Palm in the next year.

Sony, meanwhile, is the obvious driving force in the entertainment arena, but Nagel announced that the new licensees would be adding their force to this market too. Nagel also emphasised the Palm OS's strength in the enterprise market, claiming a 51 per cent share (source: Gartner) compared to 33 per cent from Pocket PC, and pointing to the fact that Java is now supported by Palm OS 5.

Although Nagel sees Palm OS 5 as a big step forward - including better encryption, support for faster ARM processors, full-motion video and a Web browser - he hinted as to what Palm OS would offer too. 'Our next generation of operating system is really designed to support the growing diversity of wireless standards.' He also said that data security would be further improved.

Nagel was bullish about why Palm devices would beat Pocket PCs, banging the ease-of-use drum, while emphasising the fact that Pocket PC devices must obey certain hardware restrictions placed by Microsoft. This creates clones rather than individual devices, Nagel claims. He added that Palm devices now cost from £70 while the cheapest Pocket PC is well over £200. 'Our strategy is to continue driving prices down,' said Nagel. He pointed to the Zire, which includes 2MB of memory versus a minimum 32MB in a Pocket PC. 'If there's a price war, we expect to win.'