Joe and Thread, I will admit that I have a fixation with Palm Computing.
I think this stems from the fact that they have continued to be successful despite only 2 to 8 MB of on-board memory. I feel jilted that they are not a member of the SanDisk family of consumer products, but the reason is becoming clearer and clearer.
The market for handheld computing is now between the Palm OS, the Win CE variations and Psion's EPOC, which actually belongs to the Symbian Venture (Psion PLC, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushita/Panasonic). Palm has done great because it does simple things well like PIM. And because the heart of the corporate/enterprise market is comprised of 1) PIM, 2) information browsing, and 3) mobile collection of data (wireless LAN connectivity or barcode scanning function), the Palm OS has performed well. It does these functions easily and efficiently. Having licensees like IBM and Symbol Technologies did not hurt Palm's chances in the enterprise market either. The question that remains is how big of a market is the enterprise industry anyway???
WinCE seems to be plaqued by the reputation of Microsoft (buggy, little interest or attentiveness to shortcomings,...), but has done well as a consumer electronics platform (CE = Compact Edition = Consumer Electronics). The Cassiopeia E-100 and E-105 (and similar offerings by Compaq and HP) demonstrate clearly the appeal of the WinCE OS, but handheld (multimedia) consumer electronics is a tiny market at present. In addition, penetration into the enterprise market has been less than stellar.
Psion continues to plug away and may have an "in" when it comes to the largest market. This is not the enterprise market, nor is it the consumer electronics market. It is the mobile Internet/cellular phone/multimedia machine/handheld PC market. The fact that Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola have more than a passing interest in Psion's EPOC OS indicates that it may be a shoe-in for the web enabled cellular phones market. I am happy that both Qualcomm and Psion have incorporated SanDisk's removable memory solutions in their products (QCOM's CDMA chipset and support software and Psion's OS).
The latest issue (February 2000) of Pen Computing Magazine has a long piece on Palm Computing. In general the piece is very, very positive about Palm. One particular section was interesting to me. It deals with the processing power of the Palm handhelds. The multimedia function of the processors are as follows...
***DragonBall MC68328 ===> 4 gray scale shades
***DragonBall MC68EZ328 ===> 16 gray scale shades
***DragonBall 33MHz MC68VZ328 ===> 256 colors
(with the latest Palm OS 3.5)
Likewise, the only Palm based devices to support a FAT file system are the TRGpro line of Palms which allow transference of CompactFlash memory cards between the Palm and the desktop. The TRGpro line can also play .WAV files, but no Internet Audio CODEC's.
I think the lack of multimedia function will be a potentially devastating shortcoming for Palm. I know that the current CEO is an ex-Sony executive and that Palm has expressed an interest in incorporation the chewing gum-like Memory Stick functionality in future (presumably more powerful) versions of the Palm OS. Maybe SONY has beaten us to the punch here.
I think we should all keep an eye on the developing Internet-enabled cell phone market and hope that SONY has saddled up the wrong horse.
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