PalmGear Acquires Palm Digital Media from PalmSource

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030903/sfw062_1.html">http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030903/sfw062_1.html</a><br /><br />"PalmSource, Inc., provider of the popular Palm OS® operating system for handhelds and smart phones and a subsidiary of Palm, Inc. and PalmGear, Inc., the world's largest and longest running Palm OS-based consumer marketplace, today announced a strategic alliance designed to bolster the success of the Palm Economy. <i>As part of the alliance, PalmGear acquired PalmSource's subsidiary Palm Digital Media</i>, and will power a new PalmSource online store and license the "PalmGear," "Palm Digital Media" and "Palm Reader" brands." <i>(Emphasis added)</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2003/20030903-palmdigitalmedia.gif" /><br /><br />Palm Digital Media was formed in 2000 when PalmOne, the PDA manufacturer formerly known as "Palm", aquired Peanut Press, which was later transferred to PalmSource in 2003. PalmSource is still part of Palm but will be spun off when the Palm-Handspring merger is completed this fall. That will leave PalmSource to work solely on the PalmOS and related products getting out of the publishing business.<br /><br />I know the first thing you are thinking if you are a Palm Reader nut like I am is "What is going to happen to Palm Reader for the Pocket PC?" Well, I don't know, but if I had to guess, nothing, they will continue developing it. Business is business and PalmGear will be anxious to maintain their sales in ebooks and you can't do that by cutting off non-Palm clients. I understand the code for Palm Reader between the Mac, Pocket PC and Windows desktop is very similar so the cost to get that market is relatively small. Furthermore, PalmGear knows how to do one thing and one thing well - sell to consumers! PalmOne and PalmSource know how to market, but their sales focus was to large companies to then resale to consumers - PalmSource even more so. It seems they want to focus on the OS development and not get bogged down in dealing with publishers, authors and one-on-one customer support. For those of you still worried, consider this: If anyone was going to drop non-Palm clients, it would have been Palm itself. Instead, Palm Reader development surged during the Palm ownership days for all clients. The Pocket PC client is currently one of the best ebook readers around on any platform. Pocket PCs are by some reports <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16757">making up over a third of the PDA sales market</a>. They won't drop that.<br /><br />Just browsing through PalmGear's site shows that it is consumer oriented. Several things I've wanted Palm Digital Media to incorporate are user reviews of books, similar to what Amazon does. PalmGear does that. Hopefully, they will begin to integrate that technology into Palm Digital Media's site. Having said that, there is a discussion in this <a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5869">thread at PalmInfoCenter</a> that calls some past practices by PalmGear into question. Let us hope those days are past. 8O<br /><br /><span style="color:red"><b>Update</b>: </span>I have since talked to a few people at PalmGear and have some updated information. You can <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158132#158132">read about it in this post</a> within the discussion thread.

[dean_shan]

I am going to link to the previous thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158087&sid=91147913df7a2f43f75a14b619994fb5) so that past comments can be read.

I just signed in to PalmDigitalMedia. Some on the logos have been changed but some are still the old one.

[disconnected]

I also just filled in their "contact us" form to say that I hope they keep the PPC reader; I'm not sure if inundating them with requests will help, but it shouldn't hurt.

[Dave Beauvais]

... Some on the logos have been changed but some are still the old one.
The stupid PalmGear logo in the upper-right corner of the pages causes some pages to be too wide for even a maximized browser window at 1024x768. Guess they've gotta get their branding in as many places as possible, though. :roll:

I just downloaded all my past purchases and a copy of the current Palm Reader software for PC and Pocket PC in case they change something in the future. (By the way, Palm Reader v1.3.2 for Pocket PC is very nice. The new file open dialog that was added in v1.3.0 is much nicer than the annoying tree listing they had in previous versions.)

I just hope this change doesn't mean a change in customer support. Every time I've contacted them about something, I received a personal, non-boilerplate reply within just a couple hours. Even reporting typos in an e-book so they could be revised was simple.

--Dave

[dazz]

EVERYONE here should go and download uBook reader!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.gowerpoint.com/

I read a LOT of ebooks and have been using the Palm Reader for a long time. I can't stand how long MS Reader takes to load!

For about the last 3 weeks I have been using the uBook Reader and it is FANTASTIC!!! It loads quickly and can read pdb, prc, txt, rtf and html files.

The "parser" is really slick. With txt files the formating can be screwed up but with uBook you can get it to string lines together that start and stop with lower case letters.

Give it a go. If you are serious about ebooks you'll love it!

Darren

[Ed Hansberry]

Update: I just talked to Dave Bartels, the Marketing Manager at PalmGear. Turns out these guys are in Franklin, Tennessee, just a few miles from my house.

I asked him a few questions and this is what I got back:
• Existing user libraries in your Palm Digital Media account will be unaffected. These should carry forward just as they did when they went from Peanut Press to Palm Digitial Media. Good news.
• "There are no plans to change any of Palm Digital Media's current product offerings." Direct quote, which basically means that non-PalmOS products like the Pocket PC, Mac and PC versions of the Palm Reader product should continue just as before. :way to go: I've actually since talked to another highly placed PalmGear executive and he confirmed that information.

So, hopefully this is going to be a win for all users if some of the existing PalmGear site tech gets integrated into the ebook side of the business.

[Wes Salmon]

Indeed PalmGear has a rather dubious past, and from what I understand is still behind in payments to developers for software they've already sold.

Where did they get the money to buy Palm Digital Media when they can't even pay their developers their commissions?

Also I wouldn't be surprised if they dumped PPC development soon after the dust settles on this deal.

Something seems fishy here, like Palm gave PalmGear some sweetheart deal to keep them above water.

[dean_shan]

There are no plans to change any of Palm Digital Media's current product offerings."Direct quote, which basically means that non-PalmOS products like the Pocket PC, Mac and PC versions of the Palm Reader product should continue just as before. :way to go:

Nice! That's good, although I heard it a little late, I had already re-download all my stuff I bought from them. :oops:

[Foo Fighter]

So, hopefully this is going to be a win for all users if some of the existing PalmGear site tech gets integrated into the ebook side of the business.

I should hope so. Kenny West doesn't exactly strike me as an unbiased, non-Palm friendly kind of guy. :wink:

[Peter Fry]

I now have worked for four companies from this very chair :D, and I've now said this three times:

We're continuing the PocketPC version.

It's turned out true every time, and I have no reason to believe that it won't turn out true again. I believe, if anything, we're in a much better position as part of a retail company than an OS company.

I don't know any of the details of the problems that PalmGear had before they were purchased by the current management, so I can't comment on them. I can say, however, that I don't believe that they'll be changing how PDM does business.

I'm more than happy to try to answer any questions.

[Ed Hansberry]

I now have worked for four companies from this very chair :D, and I've now said this three times:

We're continuing the PocketPC version.

It's turned out true every time, and I have no reason to believe that it won't turn out true again. I believe, if anything, we're in a much better position as part of a retail company than an OS company.

I don't know any of the details of the problems that PalmGear had before they were purchased by the current management, so I can't comment on them. I can say, however, that I don't believe that they'll be changing how PDM does business.

I'm more than happy to try to answer any questions.

Heh heh. This makes the third PalmGear employee that has said the same thing. I wasn't thinking in terms of you being a PG'er when I wrote my post above Peter. :lol:

[kfluet]

EVERYONE here should go and download uBook reader!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.gowerpoint.com/

I read a LOT of ebooks and have been using the Palm Reader for a long time. I can't stand how long MS Reader takes to load!
...


I love uBook myself, and use it as my primary reader. I buy ebooks in MS Reader format and use CLit to crack the DRM5 so I can read them in uBook instead of Reader (yes, I keep them to myself).

Yay for choices, but Palm Reader needs some work. ClearType is nice, but where is the full-screen option and adjustable margins? Why am I paying $15 USD for autoscroll?

[JoeMoon]

What the PALM is going on?

[surur]

I now have worked for four companies from this very chair :D, and I've now said this three times:

We're continuing the PocketPC version.


I'm more than happy to try to answer any questions.

Just one question: What percentage of your sales are to pocketpc's and what to palms. I have a friend with a palm, and all he uses it for is an address book. He can not conceive why anyone would read a book on it. As I perceive PPC's as being more tech savvy and open to the potential of their devices, I suspect more e-books would be bought by them. Can you confirm this?

Thx

Surur

[Phoenix]

Good grief. Reading this post is like trying to read Russian backwards while standing on your head.

If this company could get any more confusing... :roll:

[maximus]

What the PALM is going on?

Bah, they are just trying to increase their stock price.

[PetiteFlower]

My aunt(by marriage)'s father got a Palm JUST so he could read books on it, apparantly he takes it everywhere now and loves being able to carry a library with him. He's somewhere around 75-80, has pretty much no knowledge of computers, and probably doesn't ever touch the PIM functions(maybe contacts but probably not even calender).....this is a segment of the market too. Technology touches some people you might not expect!

It seems to me though that just due to the sheer number of people owning Palm devices out there, the Palm sales have got to far outweigh the PPC sales. Remember they still have the majority of the market share, plus all the millions of devices sold before PPCs were as affordable and popular as they are now that are still in use.....add to that the fact that PPCs come with a reader already installed and only the more advanced users are even going to think about installing a different one......I don't think it's possible that PPC users are anything other then a small but sizable minority.

[beq]

I admit I was a bit lost too since I haven't kept up... maybe Ed can put a sidebar/footnote/legend describing each old/new company name... :)

[Ed Hansberry]

I admit I was a bit lost too since I haven't kept up... maybe Ed can put a sidebar/footnote/legend describing each old/new company name... :)
Let's see....

• Palm is formed, a division of US Robotics sometime in 1996. Actually, Palm existed before then but this is when the first Palm Pilot shipped, so we'll start here.
• 1997 - USR is purchased by 3COM.
• 1998/1999 - Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm is fed up with not being able to do his own thing and leave Palm to form Handspring
• 2000 - Palm is spun off from 3COM and goes public on March 20, 2000. Their stock hits a split adjusted $3,300 per share. 8O That's right - it was really $165 but since the reverse split of 1:20, the current $18.77 price has come down from the $3,300 - a 99.43% drop.
• 2001 - around March 20 - Palm buys Peanut Press. Palm Digital Media formed.
• 2001 - Palm CEO Carl Yankowski ousted in the fall.
• 2002 - Palm decides to start working out of the OS business and creates a subsidiary called PalmSource and moves the PalmOS business and Palm Digital Media to it.
• 2003 - Palm announces plans to buy Handspring and spin PalmSource off to the public market.
• 2003 - Palm renames its hardware business, internally called PalmSolutions to Pa1mOne (w00t 733t 4/\X0r5) :roll:
• 2003 - September 3 - PalmSource (still a sub of Palm) sells Palm Digital Media to PalmGear

Yet to happen:
• 2003 - PalmOne officially completes the sale of PalmSource which begins trading on the open market. Simultaneously, PalmOne completes the acquisition of Handspring.

I maybe of a bit on some of the dates. Most of that was from memory, but you get the basic flow.

[Peter Fry]

> Comment about Russian.

I assume you are refering to the press release. I hope it wasn't my post that was confusing.

> $15 for auto scroll is onerous

Palm Reader development is a money drain for us. We try to offset the cost of development by having a version that is nicer but costs only $15. You can still read our books without purchasing the Pro version after all. Honestly, of the customers that really buy books, just about every single user pays for the Pro version. That amount of revenue still doesn't come close to making Palm Reader development profitable.

> PalmOS vs. PocketPC market share for eBooks

The PocketPC to PalmOS ratio varies from month to month, and I haven't asked recently, so I don't know the most recent numbers. We've always been heavily weighted towards PalmOS on our sales (even more than the straight market share of the two platforms). This can be explained by:

1) We were until yesterday part of Palm. This makes us better known in the PalmOS world than in the PocketPC world.

2) We've been advertising to Palm users a lot longer than to PocketPC users.

3) We don't ship with the PocketPC devices.

That being said, PocketPC is a fairly sizable chunk of our revenue, and you won't be seeing any company in today's world throwing away revenue for anything so petty as spiting some PocketPC users. If we were going to drop platforms (*WHICH WE ARE NOT GOING TO DO*) desktop OS's are a much smaller amount of revenue for us than PocketPC.

> Ed's Palm timeline

Nice. :^)

[Ed Hansberry]

A nice article with more details and some quotes in the local paper - http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section=10&screen=news&news_id=26263

[dean_shan]

• 2003 - Palm renames its hardware business, internally called PalmSolutions to Pa1mOne (w00t 733t 4/\X0r5) :roll:
:rofl:

[beq]

Let's see....&lt;snip>
Ed, you're the best :D

[roberto_torres]

I just hope that Palmgear is able to keep the Palmdigital Media Site separate from PalmGear and not integrate it into the palmgear site.

Many PPC and non-Palm OS users would be indignated if they had to browse a Palm OS site to buy books, this could translate into lower sales and people changing to MS Reader.

Palm should have sold to Handango instead, they are not biased against PPC and have fair business practices.