Last week Japan’s Access outbid Palm and other European players in the purchase of PalmSource, the keeper of the keys to the Palm OS. Access is the creator of the Blazer web browser that comes with the sale of higher end Palm devices. It’s not surprising that Palm tried to acquire PalmSource to secure it’s influence over the future of the OS it originally developed. But the Access and other players bid the price up so high that Palm dropped out and Access got the Palm. This single event creates distance between Palm and Palm OS. Maybe Palm OS as we know it is truly dead.
An Access-owned Palm OS will likely veer away from the kind of Palm OS we’ve been used to in the West. Access is likely to go after the huge possibilities of a Linux-based Palm OS in the Chinese cell phone market and shape the Linux/Palm OS according to that market’s needs. It is believed that PalmSource’s acquisition, China MobileSoft, was an especially attractive part of the deal to Access.
This week we learned that Palm is doing a big press announcement Monday morning and all evidence points to their introducing a Win Mobile 5 Treo! It seems strange after PalmOne just paid $27 million in May to get back the Palm brand name, that they would abandon the Palm OS, but things look dicey. Bill Gates will be in on the announcement on Monday. Seems like a pretty big deal.
It’s not clear yet whether Palm will also announce a new Palm version of the Treo. If Treo goes Win Mobile without a Palm counterpart, it may presage a complete switch from Palm OS to Windows Mobile. That’s big.
On the other hand, Palm might hedge their bets between Win Mobile and Palm OS over the next while. They could experiment with Win Mobile as a long-term option and also use it as a low cost stop gap during the iffy transition between the fast-becoming-ancient Palm OS Garnet and the Palm/Linux OS that PalmSource hopes to release in late 2006/early 2007. After all, Palm also recently licensed the Palm OS through 2009.
Palm’s Ed Colligan admitted in June that the PDA market is in decline. We now have credible reports that Palm’s new round of PDA’s will be far from groundbreaking. They look like they are being treated like cash cows with few new features, running the same aging Palm OS 5.4 that last year’s devices were already running. From a marketer’s point of view, that would seem appropriate.
A smaller, white, low-end color Palm called the Z22 selling for $99 seems to be the result of an effort to distill the essence of Palm into a potent, high-volume play. The new Tungsten model, now called the TX, seems to be a scaled back T5 (which many thought itself was disappointing) with only one new feature - wi-fi. It will run at 312 mhz instead of the 400 mhz of the T5 and will have 128 mb flash ram instead of the 256 mb of the T5.
These models should have great battery life but will certainly disappoint Palm enthusiasts who have been champing at the bit to have Palm go head to head against bigger, more powerful and feature-laden Win Mobile devices like the Dell Axim X51v. Even though I’m probably one of those enthusiasts, knee-jerk reactions aren’t always best.
This actually seems like smart thinking at Palm who, with visionary Jeff Hawkens, have the intellectual firepower to be smart on these things. Each of Palm’s devices has a distinct positioning. The T22 for those, especially women, who might use this cute little device instead of a paper organizer. The TX for the more practical power-user who wants lots of screen, wi-fi and good battery life in a pocketable device that will compliment his (or her) small Bluetooth cell phone. And the Lifedrive which is harder to fit in a pocket with its hard drive, but gets Palm in first to the promising hard-drive-based media/PDA space.
Even the Treo 700w, the new Win Mobile Treo, is a scaled back effort. This comes as a shock to 650-owners who especially love the Treo’s 320×320 screen. The 700w is expected to have a 240×240 pixel screen. That’s anathema to a Palm fanatic, but probably not shocking or necessarily too disappointing to Win Mobile enthusiasts. Win Mobile doesn’t support 320×320. Palm had to choose between 240×240 or 480×480 and chose the less expensive, less power-hungry option.
[photo via Engadget, Z22 and TX details via PalmInfoCenter, good analysis via Dylan Tweney, and Jeff Kirvin’s 1src podcast 42]
palmOne announced today that they are acquiring the rights to the Palm brand. palmOne will be paying PalmSource $30 million over 3.5 years for PalmSource’s 55% share of the Palm Trademark Holding Company.
Besides being available on the web, the smartphone will be available at Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and Verizon Wireless Communications Stores at Circuit City. The phone is priced at $399 including a two year commitment or $519 with a existing plan. Unlimited data service will cost you $45 a month.
