Palm Focuses On WebOS - Drops Windows Mobile

[Ed Hansberry]

<p><em>"Due to importance of webOS to our overall strategy, we've made the decision to dedicate all future development resources to the evolution of webOS. Which means that going forward, our roadmap will include only Palm webOS-based devices."</em></p><p>And with that statement at the recent Palm earnings announcement, Palm Chairman Jon Rubinstein killed off any PalmOS and Windows Mobile devices for the future. This is not unexpected. PalmOS was at the end of its life about four years ago. That is why they started using Windows Mobile in the first place. The enterprise customer needed something more robust. Now that WebOS has launched, Palm thinks it has the answer and will focus solely on that platform.</p><p>What do you think? Will the loss of Palm from Microsoft Windows Mobile licensees hurt MS in any way or will Palm vanish virtually unnoticed?</p>

[tendomentis]

Well that's just perfect. Now, if any more bugs should crop up on my Palm Treo Pro, there won't be any official fixes forthcoming?

That's super. 'Suppose I've bought my last Palm product then.

[billb3]

Well that's just perfect. Now, if any more bugs should crop up on my Palm Treo Pro, there won't be any official fixes forthcoming?

That's super. 'Suppose I've bought my last Palm product then.

You are kidding, right? Calm down! They didn't say they are discontinuing support for existing devices, they said they are not making any NEW WinMo (or PalmOS for that matter) devices. If there are large bugs, I'm sure they will be addressed. (but since that device has been out 6 months, I can't imagine there will be major bugs found now)

[Craig Horlacher]

Hopefully it will at least wake Microsoft up.

The Pre (or maybe I should say WebOS) seems pretty nice. It sure doesn't seem to have a lot of application support though. Is anyone outside of Palm making Pre applications?

[Sven Johannsen]

Hmm, i-Mate folded, Palm is dumping Win Mobile, HTC is doing a lot of Android, etc., no carrier markets their WinMO phones based on them being WinMo, maybe it's about time MS made there own device ;)

[whydidnt]

I'm not very surprised. I always thought Palm was using WM as a bridge to move from Palm OS to their new platform, anyway. They had to sell "something" to fund development of WebOS and we all new that PalmOS was essentially dead. If Android had been an option 4 years ago, they probably would have never been a WM vendor to begin with.

It remains to be seen if Palm can make WebOS relevant. It certainly looks good, but Palm's short term decisions to release the device before the SDK and without memory expansion, severely limits the market. I think Rubenstein thinks they are going to be the next Apple, and I seriously doubt that will happen. They should be trying to fill the niche between Apple's closed system and Microsofts poor UI, limited usability solutions.

[heliod]

I am not surprised at all, and I am quite sure that MS isn't either.

After all Palm only picked WinMo in order to have something to sell while developing WebOs. Everybody knew that at the moment they had an alternative from their own they would stick to it.

In my opinion, this will have no effect on MS at all. It will have most effect on Palm, which shares now with Nokia Maemo the title of most irrelevant OS and will soon be overtaken by the same Maemo.

Palm doesn't have today the strength to compete in this world, they have lost their window of opportunity.

Hmm, i-Mate folded, Palm is dumping Win Mobile, HTC is doing a lot of Android, etc., no carrier markets their WinMO phones based on them being WinMo, maybe it's about time MS made there own device

i-mate was already irrelevant for 2-3 years. And even when they were relevant, they were no more than an HTC marketing arm. Their closure this week doesn't mean anything.

About Palm, my opinion is above.

Regarding HTC, this is the main problem. But I still believe that at least for the time being, HTC will keep its focus on WinMo and release additional devices with Android. Maybe on this situation, a full MS device would only do damage.

My two cents.