Monday, September 26, 2005

The Day Palm Died

It's official, the next Treo will be Windows Mobile powered. The rumors of Palm switching to MS have been going on forever and now with the reacquisition of the Palm name, the purchase of PalmSource and the switch to Windows Mobile palm has effectively given up on the software side and become another MS vendor.

I've been over Palm for years. I much prefer Windows Mobile devices. Maybe now I can think about a Treo. Just to belabor a point, we have ANOTHER vendor that FAILED while trying to control both the hardware and the software.

Let's review. Palm, HW and SW vendor. Founders leave and create Handspringm a HW vendor that extends PalmOS with proprietary HW addons. Handspring, hurting as other devices use industry standard add ons, creates a cell phone (the Treo) based on the PalmOS. It's successful. A jealous Palm, buys Handspring and splits HW and SW into two companies. No one ever figures out why. Palm pushes low end PDA's and phone devices. Palm has a good idea , a HD based PDA aka "Life Drive" but it's too little, too late. The phone is the future. SW company is floundering, develops new OS. No one, including HW Palm adops it. Huh?

Yeah once that happened the switch to another OS should have been obvious, but it had been talked about for so long (like Apple on Intel) that no one believed it would really happen. Well, if you're a Palm die hard, pigs have just flown.

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