HP Retains Lead Over PalmOne, Microsoft Enjoys Huge Gains in EMEA

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.canalys.com/pr/r2004041.htm">http://www.canalys.com/pr/r2004041.htm</a><br /><br />Microsoft showed stunning growth in the first quarter of 2004 versus 2003 in both voice and data centric devices. PalmOne remained virtually flat in data centric devices and was up 19% in the voice centric category, though their share in voice centric devices is actually <i>dropping</i> going from 1.6% of the market in Q1 2003 to 1.0% in Q1 2004. Note that all PalmOne figures have been restated to include Handspring numbers. What about the Treo 600 though?<br /><br />"Most of Microsoft's smart phone shipments so far have been tied to the Orange network, but with the MPx200 becoming available on other operators' networks and with more models appearing over the coming months, we would expect shipments to increase substantially. PalmOne's Treo 600 hasn't done as well in EMEA as elsewhere; it needs more models and broader operator coverage to become a contender in the smart phone space."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2004/20040421-q1emeamarketshare.gif" /><br /><br />• Overall EMEA mobile device market in Q1 2004 up 62% on Q1 2003<br />• Smart/feature phone segment up 83%; handhelds/wireless handhelds up 33%<br />• Nokia still leads, but share falls sequentially; Sony Ericsson flat; Siemens into top three for first time<br />• Microsoft enjoys biggest share in voice-centric segment to date (7.8%)<br />• HP stays ahead of palmOne for third quarter running, with 56% growth versus PalmOne's 2% growth. HP's market share in data centric devices has grown from 25.1% to 29.5% while PalmOne has decreased to 27.4% from 36.2% last year. :rock on dude!:<br />• RIM share continues to rise, takes third place in data-centric devices ahead of Dell and Toshiba.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Stupid question, but what does EMEA mean? Europe, Middle East, and Africa?

[Steven Cedrone]

Europe, Middle East, and Africa?

That's it!

Steve

[huangzhinong]

Good.

[jnajera]

Gotta love it!

[Jonathan1]

Gotta love it!

Not really. Competition is really the only thing driving Microsoft and even then its been a slow scenic route drive. Without any competition we'd probably still be on Pocket PC 2000 SP8

I feel for Palm but they made their own bed. By not confronting Microsoft head on and simply telling users/the industry that you don't need these features they screwed themselves over. For god sake they owned 90% of the market at one time. If they had simply provided a more robust experience this could have very well been avoided. (Admittedly even then MS 's 60 billion in the bank is hard for any company to go up against.)

Palm's probably not going away but once again Microsoft claims another victim or if nothing else they have their jaws around Palm's throat at this point.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Palm's probably not going away but once again Microsoft claims another victim or if nothing else they have their jaws around Palm's throat at this point.

All's not lost yet! OS 6 (Cobalt, whatever) could be Palm's heroic savior, but Palm has to play their cards right.

The new devices need to fully featured (excellent screens, lot of memory, lots of connectivity options) and they have to priced really well. Plus, Palm needs to use some extensive marketing muscle to get these devices into the corporations. If Microsoft keeps making these gigantic Coca-Cola type deals, PalmOne can say goodbye forever.

[Fishie]

Palm's probably not going away but once again Microsoft claims another victim or if nothing else they have their jaws around Palm's throat at this point.

All's not lost yet! OS 6 (Cobalt, whatever) could be Palm's heroic savior, but Palm has to play their cards right.

The new devices need to fully featured (excellent screens, lot of memory, lots of connectivity options) and they have to priced really well. Plus, Palm needs to use some extensive marketing muscle to get these devices into the corporations. If Microsoft keeps making these gigantic Coca-Cola type deals, PalmOne can say goodbye forever.


Microsoft didnt do that, Symbol did.

[meroupow]

Also you should consider that the price for an Ipaq was just ridiculous in Europe.
Palms were a lot cheaper here compared to ipaqs.
Then asus and viewsonic came by and changed it.

Note: We continue to see very High price compared to US and Asia :evil: difference for LCD monitors, APNs ...

I Hope Ebay.com will finally flatten this one day.

[Felix Torres]

Sounds like the tipping point has come and gone and the virtuous spiral is taking over on the Windows Mobile side.

Certainly the remark about PALMone needing more product diversity on the Treo side (if true) is not a harbinger of good things to come. PalmOne simply *can't* engineer as many different products as the swarm of MS OEMS (each seeking differentiation) are putting out there.

The other shoe, which has yet to fall, is the general availability outside China of the various Smart-phone and data-centric communicator products we've been seeing in the last few months.

If even half of those start showing up in the west, there will likely be more than enough diversity to allow each operator to offer their own distinct product line. Possibly even with their own brand name.

Might we be comparing Verizon Smartphones to Cingular smartphones in a year or two?

[Zack Mahdavi]

Palm's probably not going away but once again Microsoft claims another victim or if nothing else they have their jaws around Palm's throat at this point.

All's not lost yet! OS 6 (Cobalt, whatever) could be Palm's heroic savior, but Palm has to play their cards right.

The new devices need to fully featured (excellent screens, lot of memory, lots of connectivity options) and they have to priced really well. Plus, Palm needs to use some extensive marketing muscle to get these devices into the corporations. If Microsoft keeps making these gigantic Coca-Cola type deals, PalmOne can say goodbye forever.


Microsoft didnt do that, Symbol did.

Oops.. sorry... in general, Microsoft has made some large corporate deals in the past.. that's really what I was trying to say... :)

[rssrfrssr]

Here we go again with a Microsoft kool-aid drinking post from Ed Hansberry....

Listen, I've said it before and I'll say it again: competition is key when Microsoft is involved. So please spare me your celebratory emoticons after remarking on how MS is beating yet another competitor down.

I read this site daily for the news and some interesting posts, but this is the type of news item that will stop me from reading this site altogether. I don't need some Microsoft lackey like Ed trumpeting how they are yet again grinding another company out of business (apparently Palm this time).

I live in a country that has a choice when it comes to products and services and personally I am thankful that it is this way. But all of you in bed with Microsoft apparently are too short-sighted to comprehend the implications of no competition. Do you remember Netscape? That is simply one example of how Microsoft crushed a competitor - and what has happened but Windows having a crappy browser being embedded in every OS since with NO innovation for 6 years and cornering 97% of the market share. Did you rejoice then as well? Hate to break it to ya, Ed, but MS doesn't innovate, they steal, cheat, copy and ruin business for others. Palm, Apple, Netscape and many others have made Microsoft who they are today, but only because MS stole what others did. Better take a closer look at your bedmate who has seduced you with a pretentious title of 'MVP' and free gear and trips to their 'conferences' around the world. May as well put a little 'sponsored by Microsoft' logo at the top of the site...

I read a quote by the musician Billy Bragg once that said something to this effect:
"I visited a country once where everyone had only one choice for everything. That country doesn't exist anymore, it was called Russia."

[huangzhinong]

hi rssrfrssr,

I don't want to talk about netscape or Apple. But for Pocket PC, unfortunately it's Palm who are copying from Pocket PC now. PocketPC is totally different from Palm from the beginning, but Palm lost their direction and just want to make an PPC clone now.

Well, if you still think MS is stealing something from Palm OS, please give us some examples.

[Ed Hansberry]

Here we go again with a Microsoft kool-aid drinking post from Ed Hansberry....
Nice ad homenimListen, I've said it before and I'll say it again: competition is key when Microsoft is involved. So please spare me your celebratory emoticons after remarking on how MS is beating yet another competitor down.
I could... but I won't. :-)
I read this site daily for the news and some interesting posts, but this is the type of news item that will stop me from reading this site altogether.
This is "daily news, views, rants and raves." Welcome to one of my "rave" posts rssrfrssr.
I don't need some Microsoft lackey like Ed trumpeting how they are yet again grinding another company out of business (apparently Palm this time).Certainly your decision.
I live in a country that has a choice when it comes to products and services and personally I am thankful that it is this way. But all of you in bed with Microsoft apparently are too short-sighted to comprehend the implications of no competition. Do you remember Netscape? That is simply one example of how Microsoft crushed a competitor - and what has happened but Windows having a crappy browser being embedded in every OS since with NO innovation for 6 years and cornering 97% of the market share. Did you rejoice then as well? Hate to break it to ya, Ed, but MS doesn't innovate, they steal, cheat, copy and ruin business for others. Palm, Apple, Netscape and many others have made Microsoft who they are today, but only because MS stole what others did. Better take a closer look at your bedmate who has seduced you with a pretentious title of 'MVP' and free gear and trips to their 'conferences' around the world. May as well put a little 'sponsored by Microsoft' logo at the top of the site...
What country is that? I live in a country where companies beat the crap out of each other and in a draw, both (or multiple) are left standing, bloodied and the consumer wins, or the ones that were delivering an inferior product or at a too high of a price are crushed because someone else had the better product. Spare me your "MS steals, cheats, blah blah blah" stories. MS has been the underdog in the PDA space since 1996 and have had very little leverage from their Office/Windows monopoly to help them. It has hampered in some aspects in that Pocket PCs/Smartphones are tied to Windows/Office platforms and, until Cobolt, Palm had Windows/Mac and other PIM desktop apps besides Outlook. Microsoft has built, since 2000, the superior OS and HP/Dell/Toshiba/HTC/etc. have built the superior packages at the right price and the consumers are voting with their wallets.

[Felix Torres]

Cry me a river!

Methinks there is way too much attention on what MS does or doesn't do to compete and not enough on their competitors.
Yes, MS is hyper-competitive.
(Which is different from anti-competitive, btw).

But they have also been gifted with some singularly inept and greedy competitors with a penchant for cutting their noses to spite their faces.

If you look back at the list of MS roadkill, from Digital Research to the whiny Netscape, you'll find that rather than murder, MS is mostly guilty of assisted suicide.

As WC Fields said, "Never give a sucker an even break."
MS brass seems to agree.
If you are to compete against them, them compete.
Match their moves.
Get their "firstest with the mostest" and keep moving on.
Don't sit to contemplate your navel or pat yourself on your back and rake in the dough with celebrtity-endorsed rehashes of three-year-old products.

Cause MS will keep coming.
And coming.
Its a Red Queen's race in this business; you have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are and few companies can afford to zig when a market zags.

Look back and you'll see that every one of MS's "victims" held commanding 90% market shares and then frittered it away with bad decisions, bad products, or simple inaction.

Microsoft wasn't always the biggest software company around.
But they are one of the oldest.
They may actually be the oldest surviving company once Computer Associates completes their current self-destruction.

And the reason they got to where they are wasn't through genius (although they do employ a lot of certified ones) or luck (although they've enjoyed their share of it) but rather simple opposition stupidity.

Do we really need to go through the litany?
Word Perfect
Lotus 1-2-3
WingZ
Harvard Graphics
dBase
Borland
Apple
IBM
All owned their markets at some point and then lost it to MS products.

Heck, Adobe used to be synonymous with fonts.
MS wanted to put Adobe font support into Windows but Adobe wouldn't deal. Why should they? They collected $40 from every single Windows user that wanted scalable fonts, which give that up just to grow the market for fonts by a factor of 100?
Hell, no!

Now TRUETYPE is universal and TYPE1 is a niche product.
Fonts used to be $50 each.
Now you can buy 7000 quality fonts for $50 euros.
This is bad?

(At least Adobe realized who their customers were and regrouped and refocused on Publishing and are doing quite nicely despite steady ongoing competition from MS products.)

How about the Encarta story?
MS tried to license Britannica's text to make a CD encyclopedia to promote CD-Rom usage.
They tried to license World Book.
Both were afraid of "channel conflict" and wouldn't do a multimedia encyclopedia.
So MS went to Funk and Wagnalls for a database of articles and hired a bunch of ex-Britannica editors and ten years later ENCARTA rules.
Whose fault is that?

Encyclopedias used to cost $1000.
Now they go for $30
This is bad?
For whom?

Even today, the Palm camp can still hold off the Windows Mobile coalition at bay *if* they simply had a product to ship. Cause the killer Windows Mobile products haven't quite reached these shores.

There is still time.
Barely.

Palm isn't doomed to destruction or Apple-like market share just because MS partners add up to 50 percent market share, but they really do need to get their act in gear cause they no longer own this market lock-stock-n-barrel; there are other players in the game, now.
Microsoft, of course.
And Symbian.
And there is always the great white hope that LINUX might amount to something.

So even if PALM screws up their last chance (and yes, it is getting to be *that* tight) competition won't die. Just the terms of competition would change.
And to assume that good news for MS platforms and products is bad for consumers is to assume the competition will act like whiny kids and take their toys home if they're not ahead.

MS competes.
And more often that not, they execute.

The same can't be said of *all* their "victims", who history shows all have a fondness for self-mutilation.

[William]

I read a quote by the musician Billy Bragg once that said something to this effect:
"I visited a country once where everyone had only one choice for everything. That country doesn't exist anymore, it was called Russia."
FYI, Russia still exists. Check your atlas.

@Felix Torres
:way to go: :clap:

[Kacey Green]

Here we go again with a Microsoft kool-aid drinking post from Ed Hansberry....

Listen, I've said it before and I'll say it again: competition is key when Microsoft is involved. So please spare me your celebratory emoticons after remarking on how MS is beating yet another competitor down.

I read this site daily for the news and some interesting posts, but this is the type of news item that will stop me from reading this site altogether. I don't need some Microsoft lackey like Ed trumpeting how they are yet again grinding another company out of business (apparently Palm this time).

I live in a country that has a choice when it comes to products and services and personally I am thankful that it is this way. But all of you in bed with Microsoft apparently are too short-sighted to comprehend the implications of no competition. Do you remember Netscape? That is simply one example of how Microsoft crushed a competitor - and what has happened but Windows having a crappy browser being embedded in every OS since with NO innovation for 6 years and cornering 97% of the market share. Did you rejoice then as well? Hate to break it to ya, Ed, but MS doesn't innovate, they steal, cheat, copy and ruin business for others. Palm, Apple, Netscape and many others have made Microsoft who they are today, but only because MS stole what others did. Better take a closer look at your bedmate who has seduced you with a pretentious title of 'MVP' and free gear and trips to their 'conferences' around the world. May as well put a little 'sponsored by Microsoft' logo at the top of the site...

I read a quote by the musician Billy Bragg once that said something to this effect:
"I visited a country once where everyone had only one choice for everything. That country doesn't exist anymore, it was called Russia."

Bitter?

The only subject I've seen ed twist is Bluetooth, yes he roots for MS he wants the platform to continue to exist/improve. Palm doesn't have to die for this to happen. He just posted the facts (the data) it used to read like this "MS has jumed another percentage point to a whoping 5% of the total market share"

[Kacey Green]

Felix Torres
I don't agree with all of your points but that was a great well thought out post, I do agree with the overall message though.

[Jonathan1]

Felix,

Good post. In general I agree. But you did leave out some of the more BS-ish tactics of Microsoft. Example is Netscape. Here was a company that made its bread and butter off of a product, in this case a browser, along with web servers. Along comes MS who in version 1,2,3 of Internet Exploder was craptastic at best. What do they do? Give the software away for free. You can screech how great MS is but that IS an anti-competitive business practice. Now that Netscape is a distant memory what is Microsoft doing? They are talking about releasing new versions of IE only in Windows updates which for all intents and purposes reverts back to charging us for the browser. How about last year when MS locked out competitor browsers from MSN http://news.com.com/2100-1023-274944.html with the excuse of"
""For browsers that we know don't support those standards (e.g. W3C standards) or that we can't insure will get a great experience for the customer, we do serve up a page that suggests that they upgrade to an IE browser that does support the standards"
and no more then a half a day later they backoff after a major uproar.
Microsoft pulls this kind of crap all the time. They may be many a thing but this innocent, benevolent company some make them out to be...they sure as **** are NOT. They use their monopoly to screw over the competition when standard business practices won't work.

In the case of Palm through this wasn't MS using their monopoly status. This was Palm being a bunch of idiots.

[Jacob]

Wasn't Netscape also offering their browser for free if you downloaded it?

I know they also sold it in the stores, but from the beginning I'm pretty sure they still offerred it for free if you chose to get it that way.

Whether they did this only in response to MS, that's a different question.

[Ed Hansberry]

Wasn't Netscape also offering their browser for free if you downloaded it?
It was free before MS had a credible browser to home users, which pretty much renders But you did leave out some of the more BS-ish tactics of Microsoft. Example is Netscape. Here was a company that made its bread and butter off of a product, in this case a browser, along with web servers. Along comes MS who in version 1,2,3 of Internet Exploder was craptastic at best. What do they do? Give the software away for free. You can screech how great MS is but that IS an anti-competitive business practice. meaningless. IE3 wasn't a crap product, it was considered by many to be superior to Netscape 3 which was out at the time. If Netscape was such a good product, why did AOL buy it and ever actually implement it into the AOL product. AFAIK, to this day it is based on IE components, as it has been since IE3 came out in the mid 90's. Superior product, plain and simple.

As for netscape's serve product, hmmmm.. You have Apache, free on Linux/Unix boxes and IIS, which comes with Windows Server. It is bundled, but the product itself isn't free. Or, you can buy Netscape's product. No wonder IIS and Apache are the most popular products out there.

[huangzhinong]

About netscape, it's free from the beginning for personal and education use.

By the way, netscape is still there and you can still get the latest version. But I never think netscape is better than IE. I tried all version netscape, none of which is my type.

IE, no matter it is free or bundled, has much better integration with OS than netscape. I use it just like it should be, nature and clean.

Of course maybe from the technique Netscape is superior than IE, I don't know much that.

[Felix Torres]

Felix,

Good post. In general I agree. But you did leave out some of the more BS-ish tactics of Microsoft. Example is Netscape.

Oooh, please don't get me started on Netscape...
Please don't...
Ohhh, what the hell!

Rant mode on:

Fact 1: Netscape was not the first web browser. It was not the first graphical web browser. It did NOT create the market for web browsers. First there was LYNX. Then there was Mosaic.

Fact 2: Mosaic was created by the National Center For Supercomputing at taxpayer expense. It was free for everybody on the planet. The source code, however, was sold for a nice sum to the SPYGLASS corporation. The Spyglass corporation then licensed that code to hundreds of outfits including Apple, IBM, MS, Quarterglass, Symantec, FTP, etc.

Fact 3: Netscape never got a license for Mosaic but, right up through version 3.x of Netscape Browser, there were whole chunks of unlicensed Spyglass mosaic code in the browser. It only came out under threat of lawsuit.

Fact 4: In 1993-94 there were 20-plus commercial browsers on the market. All were built off Mosaic code but innovated and experimented in weird and interesting ways. All were killed by a combination of three forces: first, Netscape had a perpetual-beta program where you could download for free, with no support or documentation, the latest version of their browser. Two, Netscape controlled the proprietary APIs for adding funtionality to the browser via plug-ins. Three: Netscape continually extended HTML with proprietary tags that no other browser supported.

Fact 5: After killing off all competing browsers, Netscape then announced that commercial use of their browser required a $40 license.

Fact 6: If you wanted to integrate web browsing into your code, Netscape allowed you to do one thing and one thing only: ship a Netscape installation CD with your product and pay a $40 license per unit. No discounts.

Fact 7: The first OS with built-in web browser was OS/2.
Fact 8: The second OS with built-in web browser was Mac OS.
Fact 9: None could render Netscape tables or proprietary tags, none accepted Netscape plug-ins.

Aside: MS had targetted a built-in web browser for CHICAGO as early as 1992 but what they were building inhouse was a GOPHER/LYNX client kind of browser. Once Mosaic hit the street, they trashed all their inhouse effort and paid SPYGLASS for a license to MOSAIC; all version of Internet explorer come from this code base to this day. (Call up the HELP Menu on Internet Explroer and click on about. Read the fine print.) MS then shipped IE 1.0 as first an add-on and then an integral part of the OS, just as IBM, Apple, and (I think) Next and Be did.

Netscape never complained.
Their market share was 90+ percent, after all.
They owned the market.
They went public and were annointed by the media as the next Microsoft.
So what did they do?
They spent $300 to buy Collabra, a vendor of a proprietary discussion-group product that was functionally identical but incompatible with USENET.
Oh, and they started believing their own press.

Where did things start to go south?
Well, after killing all opposition with the perpetual-beta free Netscape client, Netscape got fat dumb, and lazy.
Worse, they got religion.
Standards religion.

Remember, Netscape dominance came from the free broswer, their proprietary extensions to HTML, which they introduced and supported before anybody else, and their plug-in archecture which they controlled and everybody else had to reverse-engineer.
So, all the way to Netscape 3.x everybody was forced to play catch-up with Netscape.

But when Netscape got standards religion, they stopped developing the plug-in architecture in favor of JAVA, thereby surrendering control of embedded-object technology to MS (via ActiveX) and SUN.

Worse, they stopped extending HTML and sat back, waiting for the WWC to publish the specs for HTML 3.2 before *starting* to implement the proposed standard. Later, they waited for XML 1.0 to be certified before starting to work on a parser.

MS, of course, didn't wait.
So they had support coded, tested, and ready to go before the standards were even finalized, much less published.
As a result, IE 3.X had a full six months lead in HTML 3.2-support and a full year in XML support.

One other thing MS did; they were and are a software tools house at heart.
Everything MS sells is esentially a programing environment.
So, when MS gave the internet their full attention, they brought all their technical arsenal to bear.
Visual Basic gave us VBscript.
OLE/COM gave us ActiveX.
Access and SQL server gave us Active Server Pages.
(Go check; ASPs predate PHP.)
And, since MS eats their own dog-food, after version 1.0 Internet explorer was coded as a componentized application.
Which meant you could embed the browser function in any Windows app.
Which meant that third party-vendors, even MS competitors like Intuit, NOTES, AOL, and Britannica now had two choices.
They could web-enable their apps by licensing (at $40 a pop, never forget!) the Netscape-branded full Netscape suite, and run their apps inside Netscape's browser, *or* they could call the Windows HTTP transport and HTML-rendering engine *without* calling the IE-shell into visibility.

History records that even the most virulent anti-MS coders opted for the second solution.

It also records that, when Netscape went Open Source, the Open Sourcerors threw their hands up in disgust after over a year of digging through the browser spaguetti and decided to recode the browser from scratch as a fully-componentized application. And that the result was a big, bloated monster bigger and slower than IE so that even Apple opted for an alternate code base for *their* current generation browser. It was only until the third try (and what? five years?) that the Open Sourcerors have been able to come up with a product that properly competes with IE.

It may be worth pointing out that before Janet Reno called her press conference to announce her intention to fine MS $1 million a day for putting IE3.x into Windows, MS had exactly one employee lobbyist in Washington and donated a grand total of $30,000 to either political party.
Netscape's Chairman, btw, was Bill Clinton's number one fund-raiser in California, bringing in millions from Silicon Valley donors.

Make of that you what you will.

And the fact that MS, which does learn from its experiences, now is the largest single donor to both parties and has fully-staffed the most sophisticated lobbyist operation in DC and is now the first point of contact for both parties on technological issues.

Or the fact that the three biggest instigators of the US anti-MS anti-trust efforts were all dominant players in their own markets (AOL/Netscape, Oracle, and SUN) that were trying to keep MS from competing with them, only to now find themselves all up to their necks in trouble brought on by *other* non-MS competitors.

And MS?
Well Judge Jackson *did* point out that MS did no harm to Netscape( "did not foreclose the market"); that its crime was *trying* to kill them.

&lt;shrug>
As I said, cry me a river.
From here, Netscape looks pretty much a victim of "what goes around, comes around" and self-inflicted wounds.

Your milleage may differ.

[Ed Hansberry]

Kudos Felix Torres! I am so sick of the revisionist history around "poor Netscape, victim to the Microsoft machine" being repeated so often.

No doubt, in 2012 we'll be in some other forum and someone will cite the then defunct Palm as an example of what the evil Microsoft empire is capable of without knowing that Palm is the one digging the hole while MS occasionally walks by kicking some dirt in on them.

[rssrfrssr]

Heh, well I should know better than to post anything short of cultish rantings on this board.


Well, if you still think MS is stealing something from Palm OS, please give us some examples.

To huangzhinong:

http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayTC.pl?/980518sb4-palm.htm
among the things outright copied are:

-touch screen & stylus input, same size screen.
-4 programmable buttons.
-basic, independent PIM applications emulating what the Palm device had.
-"Applications aren't the only area in which Microsoft has tried to imitate what makes the PalmPilot so successful. The sizes of the devices are so similar that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you only saw their shadows."
-Bill Gates holding and using a Palm 3 at a conference when they were planning their Pocket PC products.

http://www.time.com/time/reports/cebit/pilot.html
-"Imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery, and it moves at lightning speed in technology, whipping a market right out from under a successful product if its makers are not very fast on their feet."
-"When I first saw these minicomputers at dinner with some Microsoft executives the other night, my first reaction was that they were a total ripoff of Palm Pilot's look and feel, but about twice as big and three times a s complicated. I started thinking of them as Paw Pilots. Donna Dubinsky, president of Palm, agreed, telling reporters: "Windows CE is fine if you want something big, heavy and slow with all the complexity of Windows 95 in your palm."

If you really don't think MS copied Palm, were you living under a rock? Where were you when these devices first came out??

Had Jeff Hawkins not succeeded with the original Pilot, there *never would have been* a Pocket PC.

Bill Gates, in response to the original Zoomer and Newton, stated MS would come out with *their* PDA, called "WinPad."

Once Zoomer and Newton were shown to be sales flops, WinPad never made it past Gates's empty brags.

Then Hawkins *finally* established the PDA marketplace with the Pilot and suddenly MS had to get in the game -- and in their usual smarmy way too, by trying to capitalize (read: steal!) on the Palm name by calling theirs a "Palm-size PC."

This is all history, all fact, that apparently you all will never mention -- or ever bother to learn.


I live in a country where companies beat the crap out of each other and in a draw, both (or multiple) are left standing, bloodied and the consumer wins

No, Ed you live in a country where MS's dominance puts other companies out of business, not 'beat the crap out of them and leave them standing'. To such an extent that the government has to step in. How does the consumer win if Palm goes out of business??


Listen, I've said it before and I'll say it again: competition is key when Microsoft is involved. So please spare me your celebratory emoticons after remarking on how MS is beating yet another competitor down.

I could... but I won't.

Ok, up to you. There must be a way to ignore your posts, I'll have to check the features of this board. :lol:

IE3 wasn't a crap product, it was considered by many to be superior to Netscape 3 which was out at the time... Superior product, plain and simple.

Wow, you are so wrong. You clearly don't remember very well. By 'many' do you mean you and your mom? I've worked in the internet industry since one could dial up at $5 a minute and BBSes before that. IE3 was a turd due to it's poor support of W3C standards and many other things that would make a long thread of it's own. I guess this just shows how long you have been brainwashed by MS.


And to Mr Felix Torres:
You are correct, that should have read the USSR, not Russia, my mistake. The point was the socialist country, which I thought you would have figured out what I meant, but oh well.
Also, the fact that MS *was investigated by the freaking governent* should tell you something about the fact they weren't playing fair. When you have an OS that reaches millions and you put a product in it, you have what is generally referred to as an advantage.

(Which is different from anti-competitive, btw).
No, that isn't how the government saw it, FYI.

As WC Fields said, "Never give a sucker an even break."
You are smoking something if you think a company with $35+ billion in revenues and $50 billion in the bank is an even competitor to ANYONE.

Well Judge Jackson *did* point out that MS did no harm to Netscape( "did not foreclose the market"); that its crime was *trying* to kill them.

MS now enjoys 97% market share with their browsers. I'd say that is pretty much shutting down a market. If memory serves, that judge needed people to explain to him just WTF a browser was, so I doubt it was a fair investigation. :roll:

Maybe you guys have the nerve to start a company that ends up fighting MS and loses and gets crushed and watches MS run away with the spoils. Oh, but that will never happen :wink:

I suppose I am arguing against those who don't seem to care about what all this dominance means: It means that MS wants to give you one choice of OS and one choice of PDA and one choice of voting terminal and one choice of workstation and one choice of security/DRM, one way of watching DVDs and music, one choice of email, this list goes on. That was my point, and you guys didn't like it. Argue all you want, but market shares don't lie, and MS has most of it in many industries it competes with. I'm not saying down with MS, for I still enjoy my PocketPC, but I still want the CHOICE of going to Palm when and if I ever do. Heck the Treo 600 looks pretty cool and has tempted me, just like the iPaq did when I had my Palm 7... Guys it's all about moderation, not absolutes. Having an absolute and single choice is unfavorable in anything, and the lack of innovation in IE due to Netscape being crushed was what I was reffering to there. In my opinion, but if you disagree, then sure, you are entitled to that. However, I thought that was what made freedom great, the fact you could choose...

Sorry for posting my opinion, I suppose this board doesn't take well to anything other than varieties of "Go Microsoft Go!"... The open minds on this board have either taken a vow of silence, don't exist or were sacrificed on an altar in Ed's basement. So I'll bow out and let you all drink your kool-aid in peace.

[Jacob]

heh.. rssrfrssr, if anyone disagrees with you they must be brainwashed! :lol:

Now, dem der's good logic!

[huangzhinong]

Heh, well I should know better than to post anything short of cultish rantings on this board.


among the things outright copied are:

-touch screen & stylus input, same size screen.

You must be joking. Touch screen and stylus input doesn't belong to POS at all. Touch screen is far earlier than POS device appeared, so let's dismiss it first. Stylus input, are you refering the Graffi? Sorry, you may forget that, POS lost the case. :D


-4 programmable buttons.

:D :D Interesting, you call 4 programmable buttons belonging to POS? sorry, far earlier than POS devices show up, my desktop keyboard has more than 8 programmable buttons.

By the way, which PPC has 4 programmable buttons? Most of them has 5, some of them has more than 6.


-basic, independent PIM applications emulating what the Palm device had.

Sorry, you may not know the whole. POS PIM application(4 parts) are copied from outlook, even their desktop parts are copied whole from MS outlook. You may find the interface looks a little bit different, but the basic things are same.




-"Applications aren't the only area in which Microsoft has tried to imitate what makes the PalmPilot so successful. The sizes of the devices are so similar that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you only saw their shadows."



So you totally forget what PDA devices show up before POS? you think the small size belonging to POS?



-Bill Gates holding and using a Palm 3 at a conference when they were planning their Pocket PC products..

So what?


You didn't give out any evidence to show PPC copying POS, did you? Let me tell you now what POS are copying from PPC:

1. color 16 bit LCD, reflective and transfective
2. speaker in PDA, not buzzier
3. support SD card
4. ARM chips
5. more than 16Mb RAM
6. Wi-fi
7. Bluetooth
8. short time battary life
9 4 or 8 way navigation buttons
10. recording
11. supporting flash rom

I don't remember all lists, but all of which are more important than size and weight copying. :mrgreen:

[Felix Torres]

And to Mr Felix Torres:
You are correct, that should have read the USSR, not Russia, my mistake. The point was the socialist country, which I thought you would have figured out what I meant, but oh well.

Also, the fact that MS *was investigated by the freaking governent* should tell you something about the fact they weren't playing fair. When you have an OS that reaches millions and you put a product in it, you have what is generally referred to as an advantage.

(Which is different from anti-competitive, btw).
No, that isn't how the government saw it, FYI.

As WC Fields said, "Never give a sucker an even break."
You are smoking something if you think a company with $35+ billion in revenues and $50 billion in the bank is an even competitor to ANYONE.

Well Judge Jackson *did* point out that MS did no harm to Netscape( "did not foreclose the market"); that its crime was *trying* to kill them.

MS now enjoys 97% market share with their browsers. I'd say that is pretty much shutting down a market. If memory serves, that judge needed people to explain to him just WTF a browser was, so I doubt it was a fair investigation. :roll:


Uh, I said nothing about russia/ussr.
You must have me confused with someone else.

The WC Fields quote is about not pulling your punches just because your opponent is an idiot. It is hardly a good trait to be merciless.

But capitalism is by nature Darwinian and merciless; it is socialism that seeks to temper market forces with concern over non-economic forces.

And, anti-competitive is actions intended to keep a compitetitor *out* of a market. (Often by resorting to political influence with the government.) Hyper-competitivessness, which is what MS is, is the equivalent of killing gnats with nukes. Again, not a good thing.

And, I gather its okay to quote Judge Jackson where he said MS broke the law but not where he said they didn't?
My apologies, then...

As for MS's billions, yes they have them; no, they're not giving any to me, or anybody else, more's the pity.
Yes, they spend more on R&D than most *industries* make in sales.
Yes, its unfair.

But life isn't fair.
Some folks are good-looking, most of us aren't; some guys are rich; most of us are not; and some folks are smart, while others are brain-dead stupid.
Fairness is purely an artificial construct, though, mostly brought up by those who fall short and don't want to look in the mirror.
The universe doesn't care about fairness.
(I highly recommend you read the classic SF short story THE COLD EQUATIONS for a brief tutorial on the laws of nature.)

Mercy and kindness are good traits but they're not mandatory.
At best they're optional.
And in the business world they can bring shareholder lawsuits.
When NETSCAPE had 90% market share they showed no interest in being fair to SPYGLASS or any of their browser competitors so they should not have executed any in return.

You may think that a 97% market share can only be obtained ilegally, but history shows that it usually comes from a good product filling a vacuum created when alternatives stop competing; it takes two to tango, after all.

MS has been around for 28 years.
Like'em or hate'em they are not going away any time soon.

No amount of revisionist whinning will change that.

[Dyehouse1]

I would like to add my two-penneth on this one.

To Felix on page 2 a very well thought out post about MS and the way they have tried to business but fear from competitors has forced there hand.

To Johnathan regarding MS browsers and Netscape I would like to say one thing in defence of MS and the MSN scandel you mention. Why shouldnt they lock out other browsers? At the end of the day both are there products albeit one is a website and the other is software. I dont suppose you complain to manufacturers like Nokia who make chargers for there own phones but not ALL phones or li-ion batteries that only fit one product or Real who refused to give MS the codec for Real Media to integrate into Media Player. Its all about brand and using that brand.....HP actually went to court against people making compatible cartridges. They were simply trying to prevent people using there firmware in this case but the fact is they are another company using one part of there productline to empower another the very same thing that MS did with MSN.

MS gets bad press - we all agree on that. Some is justified but some is just bashing because they are a big company making big money and they CAN squeeze people out of the market with simple R&amp;D power. They will win the smartphone and pocket PC wars but its going to take time and if the players like Symbian can stop bickering and push out good products then there is no reason why both products can't find a place in the market. Palm was no1 for years but lack of innovation has made them boring and only now during its 'dying years' has innovation restarted....but is it too late? only time will tell.

Many companies have gone to the wall because of MS but how many have been saved and expanded by MS - look at the Visio product that was a niche before MS brought it and made it something more important using its Office product line. This now a very good piece of software that has improved greatly. Other small companies are integrated regularly and there products make it to market and give it power using the MS brand name. How many of these small companies would survive alone in this marketplace without MS buying them and integrating them, I hear you crying foul saying they are buying up all the startups and its not fair but whats to stop Palm? They could have been with Handspring from day dot instead of fighting but again a mistake as others have mentioned. You cant keep making mistakes and getting away with it forever.

MS know business, MS know marketing and MS products are good. That noone can argue with.

OK I have finished my rant now &lt;sigh>

[rssrfrssr]

LOL this is ridiculous.

You people are ranting zealots who will not see any other opinions, apparently. The facts are out there, do the research. I've tried to show you some points which you argue and debate on technicalities. Have fun in your blinded little MS world!

[Felix Torres]

LOL this is ridiculous.

You people are ranting zealots who will not see any other opinions, apparently. The facts are out there, do the research. I've tried to show you some points which you argue and debate on technicalities. Have fun in your blinded little MS world!

Research is good.
Research can tell you much if you weren't there to start with.
But some of us were there since the days of punch cards and mainframes.
When a portable computer was the size of a sewing machine and weighed 30 pounds and we were happy to have it.
When a word processor weighed 200-plus pounds and cost $30,000 and came from WANG and it wasn't software and it crashed if the temperature got much past 70 fahrenheit.
When going online involved a phone that sat on a cradle and moved data 120 bit per second.
When tape backup meant audio cassettes
When the internet was ARPANET.
We know what is was like to use LYNX and Mosaic to browse single font text pages.
What it cost to put a PC on the intenet in 1992.
And why Windows 95 was good for consumers.

You may know what you read; we know what we lived.
We were there.
We saw it happen day by day.

And we hold no illusions about what life is like on our little world named Earth.
Reality may be ugly but it is no less real for it.

I hope things really are better on whatever world you live in, but the world *we* live in isn't kind to Ivory-towers researchers...
...or companies with a penchant for shooting themselves in the foot...
Cause suckers do NOT get breaks in the real world; what they get is a knife in the ribs (figuratively, but sometimes literally, too).
Sad but true.
Fact, not opinion.

Peace!

[Janak Parekh]

You people are ranting zealots who will not see any other opinions, apparently. The facts are out there, do the research. I've tried to show you some points which you argue and debate on technicalities. Have fun in your blinded little MS world!
I'm sorry, you're plain wrong. I use a broad variety of products every day -- Microsoft-based, Linux-based, you name it. Have you missed all the rants we've thrown at Microsoft? Nevertheless, we are biased towards Pocket PCs, and we make no pretence of hiding it, because we feel they're the best solution. If and when Palm comes out with a superior device that answers my needs, I'd be happy to switch back.

And in any case, I don't think you'll find anyone here that denies competition is a good thing. But that doesn't mean we don't want to see our favorite platform to succeed.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

And why Windows 95 was good for consumers.
Felix, I agree with most everything you said, except maybe this one. :lol: I'd have been much happier if MS went with the NT kernel straightaway...

BTW, nice summary of the browser situation. I started with Mosaic in 1994, so I can vouch for your post's accuracy. I switched to IE 3 because it was a better browser, plain and simple -- Netscape 3 was so-so, and things went downhill from there. Interestingly, it's worth pointing out the competition isn't over: I switched back to Mozilla, and use that, because I feel it's the better browser today. But that's my choice. :)

--janak

[Dyehouse1]

ranting huh?

Lets look at some of your message....

you mention that MS has lots of cash in the bank (which I dont deny) but you somehow word it like its their fault they are rich and how dare they be rich and still be doing business! Hardly the ramblings or a sane man in the 1st World. USA is a capitalist country as is the western world. Your thoughts are more in line with religious zealots (no names Osama!) who believe they should have it all from the USA and other countries,.....think about it, its true, that is what you suggest by having a go at them for being rich!. Businesses make money (well thats the idea!) so how can it be held against them for being rich?

Now who is the zealot :)

Nuff said. People like MS bashing cuz they are big and people like to drop the big men. Probably not hugged enough as a kid or somethin.

[Kacey Green]

THATS IT!

all the MS bashers are commies :D

[corrosive]

Heck, Adobe used to be synonymous with fonts.
MS wanted to put Adobe font support into Windows but Adobe wouldn't deal. Why should they? They collected $40 from every single Windows user that wanted scalable fonts, which give that up just to grow the market for fonts by a factor of 100?
Hell, no!

Now TRUETYPE is universal and TYPE1 is a niche product.
Fonts used to be $50 each.
Now you can buy 7000 quality fonts for $50 euros.
This is bad?

(At least Adobe realized who their customers were and regrouped and refocused on Publishing and are doing quite nicely despite steady ongoing competition from MS products.)


Some really good posts & points, Felix, but correct me on one thing - wasn't TrueType an Apple technology?

[Ed Hansberry]

Some really good posts & points, Felix, but correct me on one thing - wasn't TrueType an Apple technology?

Sort of. It was a collaboration between Apple and Microsoft. One did the fonts, the other did the printing engine. http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/tthist.htm