Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Them Twin Cities
Posts: 1758

500lb gorilla gunning for Palm

Infosync has this Story. Apparently, Ballmer is now in charge of pounding the living hell out of Palm and Handspring!

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From InfoSync
That left an open space for Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, which has been appointed to directly oversee the wireless and mobile computing division - understriking Microsoft's view of how important this sector is to the company, and that it will now be pushing even harder in this sector than before.

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

What's really starting to scare me is that Palm is losing its grip on the developer community. More and more third party Palm software developers are porting their apps to PPC. And I just learned a real shocker yesterday...PalmGear is going to start selling PocketPC software and peripherals early next year! My god, I never thought I would live to see the day products for Microsoft's CE/PPC platform offered on PalmGear!

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Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

I wasn't that impressed with the Stinger when I saw it, so I'm sure this is good news for MS. The operations outside of the phone seemed too clunky, especially since the model I saw offered no stylus/fingernail input.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

The market for cell phones, which outsell PDAs by a factor of 100, is too large for MS not to take seriously. And while I don't know about the rest of the country, here in LA, text messaging has critical massed: teenagers are buying Motorola Talkabout pagers in droves (@ $299 + 34.94/mo. service!). Unconnected handhelds are pass�.

This coming year will see heated competition between Motorola's Accompli/V200, Nokia's US release of the 9210, Handspring's Treo and MS's Stinger. Lacking an alpha keypad, Stinger seems like the weakest of the bunch.

For now. I expect the Treo to be a blockbuster, with MS following suit with a thumboard Stinger model on their second iteration (I think that in three years, most cell phones will have RIM-style keypads). Before long, Steve will have a winner on his hands -- but not in 2002.

MS' migration to telephony is a logical progression, but it does beg the question: What does a blue screen sound like?

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Eye of Gameboy

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

foo fighter wrote:
More and more third party Palm software developers are porting their apps to PPC. And I just learned a real shocker yesterday...PalmGear is going to start selling PocketPC software and peripherals early next year! My god, I never thought I would live to see the day products for Microsoft's CE/PPC platform offered on PalmGear!

That's probably a case of courting a more affluent customer base. Anyone willing to shell out $599 for a handheld is probably willing to pay more for related merchandise. The couple of Mac programmers I know have always made a good living -- even during the "Mac is Dead" years -- because their clients, if fewer in number, had deeper pockets than Wintel users. Besides, PG is more about commerce than community: shopping carts are "platform independent." So why not diversify along with the market?

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Eye of Gameboy

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

quote:

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Originally posted by JHromadka
I wasn't that impressed with the Stinger when I saw it, so I'm sure this is good news for MS. The operations outside of the phone seemed too clunky, especially since the model I saw offered no stylus/fingernail input.

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My blog: Pocketfactory

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

Well, it looks like I was right for calling PocketPC a failure. Check this out:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=2696

At least this will silence the PPC zealots who keep preaching the death of Palm!

Go Palm! Bye bye PocketPC....we hardly knew ya.

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

foo fighter wrote:
There is certainly no doubt in my mind that the hey day of the electronic organizer has come and gone, but disconnected orangizers still have their use.

Hence Hawkins' remark about HP still selling calculators. I can still remember my parents buying a $400 calculator in 1975 with less functionality than today's $4 models.

Obviously Palm and Handspring have failed to keep their product line useful and exciting. Prices are being slashed like crazy, because the low-midrange monochrome PDAs aren't selling.

Most PDAs aren't selling, at least beyond the Xmas factor. Nothing suggests that the blight is particular to monochromes. On the contrary, according to the article you referenced, sales of the Vx skyrocketed by 1178%; unit sales by Compaq and Sony, by comparison, increased only 46% and 78% respectively.

Consumers seem to be embracing color more quickly than Palm had expected.

I'm sure Palm would love to hear that their IIIcs and m505s are doing so well.

That's a rather small market. I believe that PocketPC is a failure in the consumer market and will eventually be relegated to niche status, and the enterprise where the pockets are deeper. Consumers will never..NEVER pay $600 for a PDA.

There'll always be one market for hamburgers and another for steaks. You don't necessarily have to compete with McDonald's.

I really don't see PocketPC as a threat to the Palm platform at all.

Or as the God of Handhelds recently said, I don't think that Microsoft will be a long-term player.

I think [the Treo] could be successful among the Palm enthusiast community who have been looking for a nicely done PalmPDA/phone hybrid, but at $399 and $499, I don't think you're going to see much activity among consumers..it's just too expensive. Perhaps when the price drops to $299 it will take off. But when it comes to cell phones, most consumers aren't willing to pay more than $199, no matter how cool or how many features it may have.

The Treo creates a new market space that's more than the sum of its parts. The Treo is not a cell phone, it's not an email pager, it's not an organizer; these functions reinforce each other synergetically in what I consider to be the prototype form factor for mobile communications -- the same way the Pilot set the standard for PDAs. At $399 for what it does, it's a steal. What people are willing to pay for existing smart phones doesn't necessarily point to the Treo's future any more than the Newton's sales history prefigured the post-Pilot market.

To reiterate: this device will have an obvious wow factor for consumers not jaded on the tech press. To wit:

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Many times when I bring a new device into a meeting one or two people are interested. But when I brought Handspring?s new Treo communicator into an important meeting the response was rabid. ?What is that?? ?How much is it?? ?Does it really combine a Palm PDA and a cellular phone?? ?Where can I get one?? ?Can we buy one for everyone here and get rid of our separate phones, pagers, Blackberries and PDAs??

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Eye of Gameboy

Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Sumner, WA
Posts: 70

Palm dead?/ New Neo Owner

You know, I think the Palm OS/handhelds are going to keep going strong. I just bought a Neo last week, and frankly, paying $199 for a PDA is a lot more appealing than paying $400-500. I'm disabled, and on somewhat low income. I think that since the Palm OS IS able to be used by someone with a moderate mobility disability, this may open up the market for those disabled that want a LIGHT alternative to a laptop, even if they can't use grafitti, they can still buy a GoType or Stowaway keyboard and have functional PDA. I think Palm and Handspring SHOULD start targetting ads to the disabled community, of which we are 54 million strong (the largest minority out there). Yes, blind persons won't be able to use a PDA, but that's only one segment of the disabled community.

Had I known that I could deal with a Palm OS based PDA, I would have bought one long ago. I've used a WinCE machine for the last 5 years, and it's not the best thing in the world, while it runs a version of Windows, it didn't sync as nicely as my Neo does.

Dana