Is Palm the Next WordPerfect?
allnetdevices.com
Is Palm the Next WordPerfect?
By David Haskin
Managing Editor, allNetDevices
September 04, 2000
In early 1988, I attended a conference at which a WordPerfect executive sniffed that his company wouldn't waste much energy developing a version for Windows, which he called a passing fancy. Instead, he said WordPerfect would devote its energy to perfecting its market-leading DOS word processor.
Where is WordPerfect now? And will the same thing happen to Palm?
The analogy between WordPerfect and Palm isn't precise, of course. WordPerfect was an application that didn't keep up with changing platforms and Palm is, itself, a platform. Still, there are some striking similarities between WordPerfect in 1988 and Palm today.
By 1988, Windows had been on the market for several years and was widely considered a failure. Similarly, Microsoft's first couple of efforts at creating a Net device platform fell flat.
Now, Microsoft has released Pocket PC, which provides multimedia and display capabilities that are superior to the Palm platform. So far, Pocket PC is showing few signs of catching up and, like WordPerfect, Palm seems to have written off the platform.
Palm's reasoning is right in the short-term and potentially fatally wrong in the long-term. Palm should take a deep breath and examine the five brutal lessons the late WordPerfect Corporation learned the hard way.
Lesson One:
Lesson One: Microsoft can wait longer than Palm. Palm is correct, of course, that the public has shown little desire for Pocket PC devices. They forget, though, how long it took Microsoft to establish Windows in the marketplace and how much ridicule the company took about Windows before that occurred.
Microsoft was forced into the strategy of waiting for the market to catch up to Pocket PC by botching the first couple of versions of Windows CE. Still, as was the case in the 80s, Microsoft has the resources and patience to wait --and to continue to improve the Windows CE platform in the meantime.
Lesson Two:
Lesson Two: Technology prices always fall. Palm is correct that Pocket PCs are currently too expensive to succeed. Pocket PCs are so expensive largely because they require so much RAM and high-quality color displays.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the price of those same components for desktop PCs held back Windows in the 1980s. However, it doesn't take a Wharton MBA to know that, in the high-tech world, component prices always drop. Pocket PCs won't always be so expensive.
Lesson Three:
Lesson Three: People want compelling applications. Palm is correct -- for now -- in saying that the majority of users just want their handhelds to manage their personal information and e-mail. However, time and again, when compelling applications are created, people migrate toward them.
Multimedia applications, an area in which the Pocket PC platform is clearly superior to Palm's, have the potential to be compelling. Those compelling applications aren't here yet, but ...
Lesson Four:
Lesson Four: Compelling applications are inevitable. The Net device world is full of innovative, bright people and there's lots of money available to fund development. I take it as an article of faith that compelling applications will be available sooner rather than later.
Lesson Five:
Lesson Five: People will use a clumsier operating system. Palm correctly points out that Pocket PC is clumsier to use than the Palm platform. Desktop Windows is clumsy, too, but zillions of users have become accustomed to it even though more usable operating systems are available.
Once users learn an operating system, they stick with it. And compelling applications will make people take the trouble to get used to Pocket PC.
How Long Does Palm Have?
Palm is readying a major new platform release for early in 2001 that builds in lots of wireless capability but won't significantly improve the platform's multimedia capabilities.
It's guesswork, of course, but I think Palm has a year after this next release to upgrade to a multimedia-savvy 32-bit operating system. If it doesn't, the handheld world could change profoundly. Like Windows, Pocket PC could become an overnight success that took years to occur. And Palm could go the way of WordPerfect. |
