Nagel Says "Windows Mobile Will Never Dominate"

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.pocketfactory.com/archives/2005/06/blast_from_the.php">http://www.pocketfactory.com/archives/2005/06/blast_from_the.php</a><br /><br /><i>"Microsoft will never dominate handheld computers because they will not develop like PCs, with different vendors cloning a standard hardware architecture running one operating system, according to the head of Palm's software arm Palmsource."</i><br /><br />Of course, Nagel is no longer there, but these words found by Foo Fighter are exactly what is wrong with PalmOS devices today. PalmOne, for example, is taking this to such an extreme, each device has a different flavor of PalmOS on it, so much so that some apps aren't working. With every new OS, there are going to be some issues with software having to be updated, be it Windows XP, Mac OSX or Windows Mobile. However, once each major revision is released, if an application runs on one device it can be reasonably expected to run on all devices.<br /><br />Not so pa1mOne devices. Jeff Kirvin has <a href="http://1src.com/?m=show&id=1089">a rant on just this issue</a>. It is an interesting listen on what is wrong with PalmOne right now and amazingly enough, he praises the Windows Mobile model of having one basic OS for the platform rather than a unique tweak for each and every device and also for Microsoft bringing developers into the beta process and ensuring they have plenty of documentation on the databases, APIs, drivers, etc.<br /><br />It is interesting to me that as time marches on, the Microsoft way of doing mobile devices, once ridiculed and shunned in the late 90's and even for the first few years of 2000 is proving to be the best way to manage a true mobile platform. If you give each licensee enough wiggle room to do much more than surface customization, you run into the API nightmare that PalmOS has fostered for the last few years where developers are getting sick and tired of guessing and rewriting code for each new device and users have had it with buying a new device and finding out that their favorite software doesn't work right on it. Contrast that to Windows Mobile where it is the norm that once an app works on a given OS, say Windows Mobile 2003SE, it is a very safe bet it will work on <i>all</i> WM2003SE devices.<br /><br />Oh yeah, and while Windows Mobile does not dominate the mobile device landscape now it is ahead of the PalmOS platform, and with devices on the SmartPhone side like the Audiovox SMT5600, Microsoft will continue to get an increasing share of the space. I am sure Nokia is no longer looking at MS as a mere gnat in this area.

[Cybrid]

In a word...YES.

Precisely why I parted ways with Palm during the Handspring visor debacles.

[MS Mobiles]

PalmOS? What's that? Does have to do something with Palm Springs?

Errr, I think that only Symbian and Linux are real competition to Windows Mobile and Palm OS is also drifting in this direction and putting GUI on Linux.

[whydidnt]

It is interesting to me that as time marches on, the Microsoft way of doing mobile devices, once ridiculed and shunned in the late 90's and even for the first few years of 2000 is proving to be the best way to manage a true mobile platform. If you give each licensee enough wiggle room to do much more than surface customization, you run into the API nightmare that PalmOS has fostered for the last few years where developers are getting sick and tired of guessing and rewriting code for each new device and users have had it with buying a new device and finding out that their favorite software doesn't work right on it. Contrast that to Windows Mobile where it is the norm that once an app works on a given OS, say Windows Mobile 2003SE, it is a very safe bet it will work on all WM2003SE devices.


I agree 100%, and yet, Mike Mace - Chief Competitive Officer (is that even a legitimate title? :bangin: ) for PalmSource has this to say about standardized apps:
>> Do you believe the Palm OS is at a disadvantage from a license's point of view that does not ship with built-in standardized applications compared to MSFT Mobile's OS which does ship with MSFT applications to allow the manipulation of MSFT files?

Most of the licensee requests we're getting are for more phone-related apps being a standard part of the OS, and we're working on it. Beyond that, most of our licensees are glad that we give them flexibility in the software they choose to bundle. It's one of the reasons they do business with us.

This was quoted in a recent Q&amp;A Mace did at the allaboutpalm message boards:

http://www.allaboutpalm.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44&amp;page=2&amp;pp=10

It seems PalmSource still doesn't really understand all the problems caused by non-standardization, or even worse, doesn't care. This would seem to explain at least part of the reason they are losing market share. They have an extremely difficult time understanding and delivering what their customers want. It's almost as if they think they still own 80% of the market and can tell customers what they need. Very frustrating for those of us who want real choices in our handhelds!

[welovejesus]

After getting burned with a Diamond Mako purchase only to find out that Psion was pulling out of the handheld market, Microsoft became the clear solution. It's very disappointing to spend a lot of money on applications to find that the platform will become extinct! What Microsoft cannot do through brilliance and strategy, Microsoft can accomplish through deep pockets and brute force marketing. Also, the Pocket PC platform tends to have much more powerful programs than the Palm.

[Felix Torres]

Literally-speaking, he *is* right; MS will never dominate mobile devices the way they dominate desktops.

They'll find *new* ways to get there. 8)

If we look at what non-MS OS vendors are *doing* instead of what they're saying, it is easy to see the long-term mobile OS market becoming a classic 80-20 market with two camps; Windows/.net and Java-on-Linux.

Both offer a standard component-based coding platform and robust multi-threading kernel. The difference is the MS solutions are coherent, cohesive, and nicely integrated top to bottom and JOL is a cut-n-paste-and-debug-like-heck toolkit, hence the 4-to-1 skew-to-come. :)

Plus, WM is here now and on the ascendancy and the JOL packs are still about 2 years away.

Palm OS, is at this point, like Symbian, a legacy environment suitable for short-term use but not for long-term commitment.

$0.02.

[WyattEarp]

So MS won't dominate that sector of the market. Big deal, neither will Palm. As long as MS is willing to compete with the other players out there the end-user and software developer wins. Everyone will get something they wanted sooner of later.

MS keeping a tight hold on the WM OS is good. It keeps everyone on the same page. Being a former Palm user I never understood why Palm alllowed for example Sony to manipulate the OS so much that most third party memory programs never worked on their Clie. Even with CF slot wasn't using standard drivers on later editions. MS may not have all the answers and probably nobody does but MS is a whole lot better than Palm.

[Ed Hansberry]

MS may not have all the answers and probably no does buy MS is a whole lot better than Palm.
Say again? :?

[Foo Fighter]

MS may not have all the answers and probably no does buy MS is a whole lot better than Palm.

Captain, the Universal Translator has malfunctioned. Set Phasers to gibberish. :bangin:

[Foo Fighter]

So MS won't dominate that sector of the market. Big deal, neither will Palm.

Uh...I thought the point of this story is that Microsoft does dominate that sector of the market.

[Possum Roadkill]

It's odd. PPC's are standardized more in some ways and less in others. My edit commands like cut, copy, and paste keep showing up in different places on different programs. Some programs have an edit menu with the commands, some have a menu that is not called edit with the commands and some have the commands on the tap and hold contextual menus.

The problem with Palm goes beyond standardization. I think it has more to do with the quality of hardware they are selling and how they seem to drag their feet with technological advances. The reason Palm let Sony use their own I/O for expansion cards, is because they didn't have anything themselves ready to be released yet. Sony released higher resolution screens, epansion cards, and better audio first. They had to write the code for this themselves because it didn't exist in the Palm OS yet. If they had been blocked from being able to do this then they also would have been prevented from releasing any of these new improvements.

[alabij]

I chose to switch to PPC/WM just because I liked the GUI. MS is good at that, good GUI, crappy organs. I wouldn't switch back to a palm device but I still don't think MS has fully gained the lead with the PPC.
The upgradeability issue with the pocket pcs is a big turn off. The OEM's have just too much power with regards to PPC's. They determine who lives and who dies.
Also up till date there are more free palm apps than ppc apps.
Remember, the palm business model is based on simplicity. No crashes, lockups or hard resets. Yeah the PPC is sophisticated with its multi tasking but which one of us here trust our pocket pcs with our data 99%(not 100 because no device works 100%)

[surur]

Here's two graphs charting the ascendancy of windows mobile.

http://surur.sytes.net/graph1.gif

http://surur.sytes.net/graph2.gif

That big spike in 2000 was the tech bubble. Palm will never have it as good as they had it then.

As you can see, WM passed POS shipments in 2004, and currently ships almost twice as many units as POS.

You can also see that it has been PPC's which has been growing the market for a while now, and Palm is slowly sinking away, even in absolute numbers. These graph (of Canalys numbers largely) include Treo's BTW.

BTW, new Palms are horribly unstable, much more so than new Pocketpc's.

http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90438

Surur

[cteel2004]

Both Microsoft and Palm try to offer alot of flexibility to their customers.

The problem for Palm is that they see the OEM's (such as Sony) as their customers, whereas Microsoft sees the end users as their customers.

[WyattEarp]

So MS won't dominate that sector of the market. Big deal, neither will Palm.

Uh...I thought the point of this story is that Microsoft does dominate that sector of the market.



[i]"Microsoft will never dominate handheld computers"

Just making a point of what the article said not a conclusion.