Raging Bull article on PALM
ragingbull.com
Symbian and Palm -- heading into the same corner?
Palm's licensing relationship with Nokia is particularly interesting from a strategic standpoint. Nokia is currently aligned with Symbian -- a joint venture with Motorola, Matsushita (MC), Ericsson (ERICY), and others -- to develop with Psion the EPOC operating system for the next generation of cell phones and handheld devices. As part of the Nokia-Palm agreement, Nokia will use Palm's OS and applications framework, but with Symbian's EPOC kernel underneath. This alliance back in October of last year immediately sparked speculation that Psion and Palm would directly announce a cross-licensing agreement, but to date no such agreement has been announced. Regardless, Palm and Symbian's indirect collaboration in the Nokia deal suggest that both parties view Microsoft and Windows CE as their only real competitor.
While Palm currently maintains a 68% market share in the handheld device market, according to IDC, one can never count out a shark like Microsoft from turning the tables. While Windows CE has yet to gain a significant foothold in either the Internet appliance or cell phone space, Microsoft has been busy cooking up alliances from its Redmond kitchen in the past few months. Perhaps the biggest coup for Microsoft was a joint venture it announced last December with Ericsson to develop Internet-enabled devices. Microsoft also enjoys similar alliances with Japan's NTT DoCoMo, British Telecom (BTY), and Nextel (NXTL). While Microsoft must always be viewed as a serious competitor, I believe it will be more important to see if Palm tightens its relationship with the Symbian consortium in the next few months.
Palm looks like a chimp to me. But if Palm and Symbian made a formal arrangement....
See ya,
cw |
