Is Palm the Next WordPerfect?
Ad,
The article has some good points in pointing out some weaknesses in Palm, but a more careful analysis will show that the author has little understanding of the market dynamics and failed to put enough thinking is his analysis. Even more, comparing WordPerfect to Palm is a mistake, because Microsoft's leverage in the PDA world is much smaller than its influence in desktop. I would like to point out some of his article's flaws.
1) Making multimedia-rich PDA in large quantity is impossible in the next 12 months. Take the color Clie as an example, if Sony can't source enough components, no one can.
2) Wireless is the key. Clearly, the surveys have said that wireless connectivity will be the killer app for PDAs, NOT multimedia. PDA going wireless' biggest problem is power consumption. Mixing multimedia and connectivity at this point is a dead product.
3) If the author is right that the Palm OS will offer better connectivity in its next release, Palm will once again offer a much greater value proposition than the CE camp. And when components availability and improvement in technology arrive in 2002, Palm will be well into its next major release. You can bet that multimedia will be in there. (In fact, I think it will be there sooner.)
4) The author failed in linking multimedia to video/audio, which CE is great for. In my opinion, gaming should be the number one multimedia function. In the area, Palm is again leading over CE.
I don't see flaws in Palm's execution plan. Do you? On the other hand, CE is nearly falling apart. For a while, embedded NT was pushed by the NT group, now the Windows group is pushing Windows for embedded devices. With dotNet as its major innitiative, Microsoft is starting to show faulterings of an organization that's simply too large. It is not what Palm is going to do to Microsoft, rather, it's what Microsoft will do to itself that should be the number one concern in MSFT investors' heads.
Regards,
Khan |
