Palm CEO: We Are Not Abandoning The Palm OS!
In a letter addressed to the software development community, Palm Inc.’s CEO Ed Colligan reacted directly to messages on mytreo.net and other forums suggesting that Palm would abandon the Palm operating system on future devices. Mr. Colligan wrote, “I’m concerned by the number of posts I’ve read that suggest that Palm’s support of Palm OS is either wavering or short-lived. It is neither.”
Palm’s commitment to the Palm operating system came into question recently after Palm announced that it would offer a competing operating system, Windows Mobile, on a future model of its flagship product, the Treo smartphone. This happened around the time that Palm’s sister company, PalmSource, which owns the Palm operating system, admitted difficulties attracting manufacturers to the Palm platform, declared its intention to focus on the Lynux operating system and put itself up for sale, eventually agreeing to be acquired by Japan’s Access Co. As a result, a number of threads were started by mytreo.net members who asked, “Is this the end of Palm OS?”
Mr. Colligan hopes not! He wrote, “I thought I had made this perfectly clear with earlier statements, but let me reiterate that our announcement [to support] Windows Mobile… is all about growing the Treo market. This is not a zero-sum game! …this does not mean we need to walk away from our existing products or technology partnerships, like Palm OS.”
Palm hopes that its Windows Mobile Treo will create incremental business without cannibalizing existing Palm platform sales. Mr. Colligan said, “It’s a fact that a large majority of businesses around the world use a Microsoft-based infrastructure across their IT assets. We can either answer that marketplace demand with a Windows-based product, or we can walk away from that business. [But] we have a rich product roadmap of Palm OS-based handheld computers, mobile managers AND Treo smartphones that we intend to deliver. Our Palm OS customer loyalty is extremely high, and we intend to continue to earn that loyalty with great Palm OS-based products. We have sold more than 30 million Palm OS-based products over the years, and it is not our intent to walk away from such a strong and loyal user base. That’s why in May we extended our license for Palm OS, giving us the right to continue to make and market Palm OS-based products until 2010.”
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Well I remember the extinction of the Apple Newton - after which virtually all our competitors vanished also - an extinction that Apple assured the development community would “never happen”.
Curiously an earlier investment from Microsoft aparently had nothing to do with the demise of the platform either.
The big difference here - and one any CEO should be congizant of - is the number 30,000,000.
That many users - all very loyal users - not to push a “Start” button - beleive they already have a perfectly viable investment in the palm of their hands.
You do not want to alienate 30M users.
The ONLY blue-collar computer out there - one on which you can train anyone to push a single black-box button on for field data capture: is the Palm. And for these users the Palm is disposable and replaceable cheaply.
It boggles the mind Palm have fundamentally ignored real field enterprise users who will remain loyal for decades; and gone for the disposable consumer marketplace as it’s prime revenue source. I would prefer to compete with Microsoft in a race already being run, than change courses and go compete with all the wireless platforms in the marketplace.
Access Co are the bonafide owners of the Palm OS, if I’d purchased the Palm OS I’d be taking Microsoft to town, embedding it everywhere possible, exploiting a keenly loyal body of users akin to Apple in the 80’s.
Regardless - so long as the future of Palm includes downward compatability - all is well - Unix can offer this, but what I’m curious about is what happened to BDos?? An environment which (also) would be able to emulate and support existing Palm apps while opening up a wonderful threaded world for the platform…
Sigh… of course the planet may only want one OS and one type of burger, one flavour for everything, and it ends up with 4 companies: WalMart, Microsoft, McDonalds and CitiBank.
For my money I’m splitting our development efforts now to cover PPC, Palm, RIM and Symbian (yech) so we don’t end up with fantastic software looking for a platform - as per the crash of the Newton - disaster - for 30M users there are development communities who rely on the platform’s existance… Note the Playstation is still alive and flourishing due to the fact that Sony’s loyal developers didn’t cross over to the dark side when the XBox arrived on the scene bursting with cash - the war CAN be a stalemate and everyone get what they want, so long as long term thinking exists.
Sigh - if only Digital Research and CPM had grabbed the 8-bit market in 1979 this just wouldn’t be an issue!
It appears that they are admitting that they DO read the forums and it DOES have an effect on Palm. Very encouraging.
Maybe the next Palm Treo will include RAM!
…they DO read the forums and it DOES have an effect on Palm…
And maybe if we all shout loudly enough the next Palm Treo will include wifi!!
I’d love to have wifi in the next Palm Treo… as long as I can shut it off so it doesn’t suck up my battery.
I had an iPAQ 6315 before I switched to my Treo 650. The 6315 had wifi. And I quickly learned to shut it off because it obliterated the already pathetic battery life of the iPAQ.
I don’t miss wifi at all. With my unlimited internet access over GPRS/EDGE, I don’t need it.
But sure, if it can be included in a way that won’t increase the size, cost or battery life, then by all means do so.
| I had an iPAQ 6315 before I switched to my Treo 650. The
| 6315 had wifi. And I quickly learned to shut it off because
| it obliterated the already pathetic battery life of the
| iPAQ.
And that’s the primary reason that I’ll never buy a Windows based PDA or cellphone: in terms of energy consumption, if PalmOS is a Prius then WindowsCE is a Hummer.
Particularly for a cellphone, battery life is a core quality. I can forget to charge my Treo 650 for a week, and still be able to take a call! This is, for me, what makes the 650 more than a novelty, and quite simply the best cellphone I’ve ever owned.
It’ll be *very* interesting to see a battery life head to head with the Windows Treo and Palm Treo. My expectation is that the Windows one will have 1/3 to 1/2 the battery life.
Folks, I echo all the sentiments that I have heard.
Means they do listen to the Blogs and Forums then hear this….
You really do not control Palm OS if the Orientals have it. I worked in Intel for 16 years. If there is one thing I learned about the Orientals. You do not control them. They control you. You think you are in charge. Then one day you wake up and you are surrounded by them. They are making the rules and you will comply or you will go else where. You are a part of the whole you are not an individual. You work for the betterment of the collective not for the betterment of the product. Only when both are synanymous do you do so…..
So only when the innovations they want to do are percieved to be for the betterment of the OS will they do things that will help us.
Items Like WiFi although they would be great for us base users of 30 Million likely would not happen as it would prevent them from a viable market like the Cell Phone Vendors as they will continue to require that the WiFi either be disabled or not fully functional in one way or another so that they can milk the product (Service) for all it is worth.
Until the dicotomy of Service Driving Innovation can be broken and Supply and Demand take over there really will not be any change when it comes to the relationship here of the Palm OS, Linux, and the Cellphone carriers.
Plus the Cellphone Carriers will never want us to have access to the command line on these phones. I for one would love to have access to the command line so I could do things like schedule processes that do not require graphics or lighting systems to run. Things that just run in the back ground and do not display jack while they do so. Any time the screen has to display there is energy used. There is a fraction of the energy used when the actions just take place in the back ground.
A darkened display would suffice. Messages could be sent to the screen then when the screen is lit they are viewable. But turn off the bloody light and leave it off unless it is requested. It is a major battery hog.
Thank god for the rechargable and replaceable battery in the Treo 650. Keep that up…. Do not abandon that. I carry three batteries with me now at all times. Two backups and one in the phone for base power. Now to get a Blue Tooth Headset that has a swapable battery or possibly a solar panel that charges it while there is light to charge the ear piece. Something cool looking but functional. That would be great then the Ear Piece BT sets would be a great tools. Now it requires that we still charge it. Yes the life of the units is fairly long. But Lets look beyond that. Why not make it able to charge on the fly. That would be fantastic.
Nuff said. Keep on keepin on. Love Palm and Palm devices. Especially my Treo. Have had the Treo 90, 300, 600 and now 650. Looking forward to the next release. Hopefully with WiFi and a Hard Drive. 5 GB range would be preferred. Then I could carry a weeks worth of dvr content that has been converted to screen size viewable on my phone. 3 CSI’s, NCIS, and SciFi Friday… Wooo Whooo. What a treat that would be. Being a road warrior it would make my travel to and from the client so much more enjoyable.
Well, CEO’s message is not at all convincing.. I agree with most others that I was also one of the users, who wanted to see competition develop for Microsoft product in handheld market. Decision from Palm has dented the confidence and now loyalty to Palm handheld shall only cherish based on the upgrade offers to Palm users… Those offers got to be best of the best…..
Yup - loved CaryC’s comments on this, a dose of reality is the irony here: you outsource to improve profits, and you end up losing control completely.
I couldn’t help thinking, though, about the Intel<>Microsoft game we’ve been playing all these years, my focus for the problem would be more in Seattle than the Orient!
Microsoft - if you recall - PROMISED us all the source code and also started UP the company with a promise of Open Source - how it is nobody has held them to their promises is beyond comprehension…
“You’ll get my source code when you take it from my cold dead hand…”
BUT - if there was OpenSource we wouldn’t have the IE debacle of today where security holes are fixed 1000’s of % faster by 3rd parties than Microsoft themselves. And why are all the holes there? Because Microsoft want to see everything which you have on your desktop - so they might get more $$’s from detected pirates - even though they already have 200Billion in the bank! - This is a lot like GM putting a video camera in my car which crashes the vehicle everytime it’s used but at least they can see if the purchaser is driving the car; and then me buying the same car again next year after I’ve recovered from the accident assuming it’ll be better this time.
I see Handhelds as a marketplace where it is still possible to get out of the Monopoly … and nobody can argue that the world will be safer if we get a CLI because LOOK at the mess we’re all in..! It could NOT be any more vulnerable - really - could it???
Today our own PC’s are more vulnerable than ever and have had more downtime than ANYTHING you could get in the 70’s, 80’s or even the 1990’s !
To be honest I would have a solid legal case to sue Microsoft for the combined years of downtime they have cost me (since 95 came out), my company and most of the people I know.
And just WHY to we tolerate this garbage? We’re helpless. Either use the same crap everyone else is using or you’re a mutant - WHY? Because it is NOT Open Source!
And now we face the brave new Mobile world where Windows (cringe) has a real shot at becoming the OS of “choice”?? Shoot me now!
Just because you can read a .DOC file and get an email in a “similar look and feel” doesn’t justify dropping an OS which already does all that, better and faster, on some vague belief that that is what people want (proved somehow because Windows has a desktop monopoly) - people don’t know what they want and they should be allowed the luxury of choice…
Still - with things going the way they are - the OS is sold off, the hardware has sold-out, groan, it is quite possible that once again the Unix platform get’s shunned for invalid reasons and the inventors of beer milkshakes run the world…
I’d just like to point out that the inventors of beer milkshakes just released a new XBox which crashes and overheats within 30 minutes of powerup: proving they didn’t even care enough to use their own hardware for more than 30 minutes before releasing it on an unsuspecting public -> reminiscent of any other Microsoft releases? Do you believe that history only repeats itself? Then you must know in your heart of hearts that the organization is rotten with contempt for their customers from the top to the bottom…
But, sure, go with Windows, they have to get it right one day…
Just a rant - I am not legally responsible for anything I say while raging under the underpowered influence of XP anyway!
I have been a loyal consumer since my 1st Handspring Visor. Now, I know that isn’t really saying much, but, today I believe the Treo is the best bang for the buck for me and my business. But, like everyone else, I have three ideas to make it even better:
1) a retractable shoulder-holder (I get greasy alot)
2) a one-button or voice commanded “clock”to show when needed
3) flash for camera
Thank You for your much enjoyed inputs everyone…………….Jerald