Throwing Down The Gauntlet

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/144310_palm17.html">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/144310_palm17.html</a><br /><br />Eric Benhamou, Palm's CEO, made some bold statements in Berlin this week.<br /><br />"Palm Inc., the world's largest maker of hand-held computers, expects "in the near future" to gain users for its software from those who now use Microsoft Corp.'s Pocket PC operating system, its chief executive says. "We've received a lot of interest from people who up till now only considered Pocket PC," Eric Benhamou said in an interview at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition conference in Berlin."<br /><br />There is no question that PalmOS devices have some compelling hardware, especially in the area of screens, but they still lack the overall versatility that Pocket PCs have, especially when it comes to enterprise deployment. If you exclude the EM-500 from 3 years ago and the more recent 1910/1915, which both had very limited expansion capabilities, there hasn't been a Pocket PC that couldn't be integrated into most networks. They all support TCP/IP natively, have POP3/IMAP4 email support, ubiquitous, if limited, Pocket Office support without the need for desktop converters, etc. There are Palm devices that some of these features and others that don't. Some have it in ROM, others require you to install apps from the CD. Inbox solutions on the Palm aren't the same from OEM to OEM or even device to device sometimes.<br /><br />Make no mistake though, Palm <b><i>is</i></b> poised to make inroads against the Pocket PC in both consumer and enterprise markets. Microsoft spent a whole lot of time basically porting Pocket PC 2002's UI to the newer Windows CE 4.2 platform. As a result, going from 2002 to 2003 looks like a minor revision on the outside but should pay off big dividends in the future. The Pocket PC team can now focus on the Pocket PC experience and not worry about basic things like incorporating Tap-And-Hold into the device. CE 4.2 has it. It is now up to Microsoft to push forward with the next revision, hopefully breaking the 320X240 screen resolution barrier and giving OEMs more room to innovate. HP is already doing so with the iPAQ 4300 series that has an integrated keyboard.<br /><br />Palm wasn't doing much from 1999-2002 besides frantically working on OS5. They completed that and are pushing forward on OS6. Sony meanwhile has been wowing everyone with their hardware. During that time, Pocket PC made great inroads into the market going from 10% share to the mid 30% range. The next few years won't be so easy. Palm is no longer standing still. Your move Microsoft.

[aroma]

I for one hope he can come through on his statements. Microsoft and PPC OEMs need some stiff competition to get us out of the "stale" arena we've been in for a while.

- Aaron

[bibap]

Good comments. While I will continue to use my Ipaq and Toshiba for networking and GPS duties, I just returned to the Palm fold for my daily use. The T3 sucked me back with its large screen and landscape mode. I do a lot of spreadsheets so the extra functionality of Documents to Go, combined with a landscape display, are an unbeatable combination.

Let's hope Microsoft gets the message.

[SandersP]

I hope this put little heat on Microsoft PPC team. They've been rather lame lately.

when intel bulverde comes out, they better have something BIG, instead of lame rehash. In the meantime, they can do few minor touch up. Todays' screen update sounds like a big hit to me.

On the Palm side, I think they are just doing PR interview fluff. Nagel just get cought spouting something that SonyEricsson denies. Acer, which was tauted as going to be a huge Palm player also hasn't shown anything since the mega announcement last year. So like anything Palm inc says. I want to see the stuff on the shelf, instead of bunch of interviews and fluff. I would also like to know what Sony is going to do with their dissapearing marketshare. That alone wil cost Palm 5-8% market share.

[AhuhX]

Yeah, I keep hearing all this stuff about Sony innovating blah blah, but has anyone else noticed the UX-50 has bombed completely?

Pity, because I love its' form factor but the implementation was terrible.

[Janak Parekh]

Pity, because I love its' form factor but the implementation was terrible.
Sony's not one to sit still, though. You'll keep on seeing new models from them -- and if they believe in the UX50's form factor, you'll see a successor before long.

--janak

[Shaun Stuart]

The most exciting handheld devices to be released in 2003 for me are:

XDA2
Tapwaves Zodiac
Sony UX-50
Ipaq 4000 series
Tungsten T3
Ipaq 2215
Garmins ique GPS pda

I know everyone will have their own favourites but I would put mine in that order. Its a real surprise to me that 4 out of 7 are Palm devices - 12 months ago I would not even have considered a Palm.

[whydidnt]

I have actually already "made the switch" to the Sony UX-50, as my primary PDA. I don't know about it bombing, but the lancscape mode, combined with a usuable keyboard is what it took to sell me.

Note the UX-50 is far from perfect and if a PPC OEM could create a similar clamshell device I would change back in a heartbeat, but I wonder if MS will allow this to happen.

Biggest complaint with the UX-50 - insufficient program memory. It has to have the goofiest, most inefficient use of 104 MB of membory I have ever seen. Managing and moving programs on to and off of external memory is also a major pain, and of course necessary due to the lack of usable memory.

Whydidnt

[AhuhX]

Biggest complaint with the UX-50 - insufficient program memory. It has to have the goofiest, most inefficient use of 104 MB of membory I have ever seen.

Yeah that's part of what I was talking about. That and the flip, without it actually flipping the screen to portrait thing. Oh, a couple of other things I won't bother going into here. Gorgeous hardware, but just seems a really dodgy implementation of a great idea. I suspect this is because of mostly because of Palm OS's current limitations, so it's not really Sony's fault.

BTW When I said it bombed I'm only talking from my personal observations. Nothing factual to back it up. Just seems that way to me.

[SassKwatch]

I hope this put little heat on Microsoft PPC team. They've been rather lame lately.

I suspect the PPC team itself probably works pretty diligently to provide as good a product as they can with the resources they're provided. ("resources they're provided" being the operative phrase there).

But I also have this sneaking suspicion that 'the suits' at MS might tend to agree with the recent statement out of Toshiba that 'the pda is dead'. I'm thinking they view the future of mobile devices as incorporating the PPC Phone Edition and Tablet PC's...with the pda disappearing from the market. *IF* that's the case, I hope they're wrong. "But"............

[LarDude]

I hope this put little heat on Microsoft PPC team. They've been rather lame lately.

I suspect the PPC team itself probably works pretty diligently to provide as good a product as they can with the resources they're provided. ("resources they're provided" being the operative phrase there).

But I also have this sneaking suspicion that 'the suits' at MS might tend to agree with the recent statement out of Toshiba that 'the pda is dead'. I'm thinking they view the future of mobile devices as incorporating the PPC Phone Edition and Tablet PC's...with the pda disappearing from the market. *IF* that's the case, I hope they're wrong. "But"............

I agree with SassKwatch. Regardless of what their "real" stance is, empirically, we are given the perception that they (MS) are less than fully committed to the PocketPC form factor. Where is all the MS "PocketPC" evangelism that we saw a few years back? Maybe they're relying too much on Jason and his cohorts :wink: . (Jason, stop doing such a good job!).

[Deslock]

Biggest complaint with the UX-50 - insufficient program memory. It has to have the goofiest, most inefficient use of 104 MB of membory I have ever seen.
Yeah that's part of what I was talking about. That and the flip, without it actually flipping the screen to portrait thing. Oh, a couple of other things I won't bother going into here. Gorgeous hardware, but just seems a really dodgy implementation of a great idea. I suspect this is because of mostly because of Palm OS's current limitations, so it's not really Sony's fault.
The T3 has 64MB of non-partitioned RAM, so it is Sony's fault. With the T3, I have more PDA memory than I know what to do with (this is the first time in a while that I've been able to say that).

While the UX-50 is impressive, its small screen, memory partitioning, and portrait-only setup kept me away from it. It's very promising though... add 64MB base-RAM, the T3's portrait/landscape switching abilities, a 3.8" screen, and make the unit shorter (from front-to-back so it can be held comfortably in portrait mode) and Sony would have a winner.

[DavidAlanHart]

When the Pocket PC's came out I thought that they would rule just because of M$'s marketing muscle. But I think what has happened is the enterprise portion of the market has never really materialized. So the people who buy the Pocket PC's tend to be people who like running multiple things at a time and like the tight integration with Outlook. In other words, probably a minorty of the PDA buying public.

For most the PDA seems to be a glorified toy. But the more I think about I believe Toshiba is correct. I think the market will be stratified by smart phones and tablet PCs.

On the phone end its partly its a size thing. People want the small form factor that they have gotten used to in phones and want to keep it.

The big driver towards tablets will start taking place next year. That's when MRAM will come and take the big selling point that all PDAs have over laptops: instant-on with little power consumption. The next phase will come in following years with the digital ink screens. The combination of the two will leave very low cost (except for the OS), durable machines that run all of your desktop applications.

I'm not sure the form factor of today's PDA screen will completely go away. I'm sure that some people will actually want a tablet PC the size of today's PDA or perhaps the size of the Handheld PCs. And with digital ink screens cheap putting out a cheap PC won't be to difficult for a small mfg trying to take advantage of a niche.

I think the question most of will ask years from now is why did M$ enter the PDA market and seemingly abandon it when it started showing its greatest strength. The answer may be is that M$ entered this market to stop specifically two things from happening: Symbian becoming the dominant OS for phones and Palm becoming the dominant OS for PDAs. I think that the M$ strategy is that by being in every market they can make sure of three things:

1) Symbian will not dominate the phone arena. Despite Nokia who is really making the interesting phones for this OS. You can argue that recent M$ smartphone II and Handspring's Treo 600 are more interesting phones.
2) Palm may be the dominant PDA mfg but they don't own the market and is obvious that they dominate
3) Tablet PC's are owned by M$

I think that the strategy is be in everything so that nothing will be dominate until the economics of the marketplace dictate:

1) really cheap phones that have to sync with the only PIM that people know (Outlook)
2) tablet PC's are not much more expensive that desktops and are far more useful. Naturally to do what a desktop does it has to run Windows.

[darrylb]

I suspect the PPC team itself probably works pretty diligently to provide as good a product as they can with the resources they're provided. ("resources they're provided" being the operative phrase there).

But I also have this sneaking suspicion that 'the suits' at MS might tend to agree with the recent statement out of Toshiba that 'the pda is dead'. I'm thinking they view the future of mobile devices as incorporating the PPC Phone Edition and Tablet PC's...with the pda disappearing from the market. *IF* that's the case, I hope they're wrong. "But"............

I agree with SassKwatch. Regardless of what their "real" stance is, empirically, we are given the perception that they (MS) are less than fully committed to the PocketPC form factor. Where is all the MS "PocketPC" evangelism that we saw a few years back? Maybe they're relying too much on Jason and his cohorts :wink: . (Jason, stop doing such a good job!).

I partly agree. I would not be surprised if Microsoft ditched the PocketPC, but redoubled their efforts on the PocketPC Phone Edition devices. These are more connected devices and are one part of the convergence style devices (with smart phones being the other half) that will probably be the future of handheld devices.

I certainly hope that Microsoft pulls its finger out. Having evangelised for PocketPC over Palm, I dont want to eat my hat and switch over myself :oops: . But I'll use the best device, not just one the one I am used to.

[shawnc]

When the Pocket PC's came out I thought that they would rule just because of M$'s marketing muscle. But I think what has happened is the enterprise portion of the market has never really materialized. So the people who buy the Pocket PC's tend to be people who like running multiple things at a time and like the tight integration with Outlook. In other words, probably a minorty of the PDA buying public.

For most the PDA seems to be a glorified toy. But the more I think about I believe Toshiba is correct. I think the market will be stratified by smart phones and tablet PCs.

On the phone end its partly its a size thing. People want the small form factor that they have gotten used to in phones and want to keep it.

The big driver towards tablets will start taking place next year. That's when MRAM will come and take the big selling point that all PDAs have over laptops: instant-on with little power consumption. The next phase will come in following years with the digital ink screens. The combination of the two will leave very low cost (except for the OS), durable machines that run all of your desktop applications.

I'm not sure the form factor of today's PDA screen will completely go away. I'm sure that some people will actually want a tablet PC the size of today's PDA or perhaps the size of the Handheld PCs. And with digital ink screens cheap putting out a cheap PC won't be to difficult for a small mfg trying to take advantage of a niche.

I think the question most of will ask years from now is why did M$ enter the PDA market and seemingly abandon it when it started showing its greatest strength. The answer may be is that M$ entered this market to stop specifically two things from happening: Symbian becoming the dominant OS for phones and Palm becoming the dominant OS for PDAs. I think that the M$ strategy is that by being in every market they can make sure of three things:

1) Symbian will not dominate the phone arena. Despite Nokia who is really making the interesting phones for this OS. You can argue that recent M$ smartphone II and Handspring's Treo 600 are more interesting phones.
2) Palm may be the dominant PDA mfg but they don't own the market and is obvious that they dominate
3) Tablet PC's are owned by M$

I think that the strategy is be in everything so that nothing will be dominate until the economics of the marketplace dictate:

1) really cheap phones that have to sync with the only PIM that people know (Outlook)
2) tablet PC's are not much more expensive that desktops and are far more useful. Naturally to do what a desktop does it has to run Windows.

This is the most compelling argument I have heard in the "is it or isn't it dead" debate. Eventually it will die, but not for a while. In the meantime, it will be no more than a niche product. Sorry guys, M$ blew it! I know that's not a popular sentiment with this audience, but it's true.

[Prevost]

But I also have this sneaking suspicion that 'the suits' at MS might tend to agree with the recent statement out of Toshiba that 'the pda is dead'. I'm thinking they view the future of mobile devices as incorporating the PPC Phone Edition and Tablet PC's...with the pda disappearing from the market. *IF* that's the case, I hope they're wrong. "But"............
Remember, if they have the monopoly, they make the market. And they also can make it dissappear.

If MS decide tomorrow to stop PPC, what would anybody do?

[Vincent M Ferrari]

The most exciting handheld devices to be released in 2003 for me are:

...
Tapwaves Zodiac

I have to ask, and please please please don't take offense to this, it's a legitimate question:

What's so exciting about the Zodiac? It's an oversized Palm masquerading as a handheld gaming unit. I've seen the games and they're okay, but really I kinda put this in the same category as the N-Gage... An interesting concept, but not really worthy of attention...

Since you're excited by it, could you maybe enlighten me on what's exciting about it? I really don't see it...

As I said, I'm not trying to start a flame war; I'm legitimately curious...