I don't have share numbers but almost all of my Euro-based friends are PALM users. A number of apps I use are written by Euro-based developers. The classic PALM tv ad even takes place in Europe. :-)
I don't have any exact numbers on me either, but while I was in Europe, all the handhelds I saw being used were Psions. Also, while in stores, Psion handhelds were displayed more prominently than Palms, and the PDA-related pamphlets I picked up spent much more space covering Psion's devices. Perhaps "near-monopoly" was a bit of a stretch, but I think it's safe to say that Psion has much more market share than Palm in Europe, at least for now.
Going to 32-bit is definetely on PALM's roadmap and I believe they've already announced the future processor family is ARM.
There's a difference between using a 32-bit processor and a 32-bit OS. It's good to see that Palm's finally ditching Motorola's antiquated Dragonball processor line, but I'd still like to here some affirmitive comments from them regarding the creation of a 32-bit version of the Palm OS.
Not only has Epoc approached PALM about some sort of partnership, Nokia itself is a PALM licensee.
I covered the Nokia-Palm deal in my earlier post. I know that Motorola has a deal with Palm OS. The point I was trying to make, however, is that Nokia refuses to make a device running the Palm OS that doesn't also support Epoc.
The first part may be true but even, say, 3 handsets for 1 handheld still puts the handheld market in the hundreds of millions before very many years go by.
With all due respect, I doubt that growth will get that high. Even 5:1 may prove to be too optimistic.
Perhaps I didn't voice my arguments as clearly as I should've in my initial post. The main point that I was trying to make was that the largest market for operating systems for handheld devices will be for phones rather than PDAs, and that most of the world's leading handset manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Sony, Panasonic) save for maybe Siemens and Samsung, who haven't made any major formal announcements yet, have rallied around Symbian.
I think it's safe to say that, although future chipsets will be able to support multiple operating systems, due to resource issues, most handsets will only feature one OS. I also think it's safe to say that although there'll be significant overlap between current PDA owners and the first purchasers of 3G phones, most buyers of 3G phones will have never owned a PDA.
With all of this kept in mind, the fact that Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, and the rest are pushing Epoc as their OS of choice for the majority of the 3G handsets they produce matters tremenously. The only other alternative to an all-out push for Symbian as the de facto platform for operating systems is a polarized "two-party system," with all the software interoperability problems that inevitably result from such a system. Both due to common sense, and due to their significant investments in Symbian, these companies, if they can help it, don't want to create such a scenario for handset operating systems, at least outside of North America, in places where Palm's mindshare isn't as significant. Thus, to me, Nokia's and Motorola's licensing of the Palm OS seems more like a precautionary measure to make sure that they have all bases covered, and can cater to the Palm audience.
Still, even though 3G phones utilizing the Palm OS will be created, it should also be noted that all phones won't be created equal. As more and more advanced features become possible thanks to Moore's Law, chipset miniaturization, and the additional bandwidth provided by 3G, the handset market will get more and more segmented. Considering the support currently being given to Symbian, this means that the leading edge, mass-market phones put out by handset manufacturers will first incorporate Epoc, and Palm versions will only come out later in order to appease the niche market that'll prefer the Palm platform, much like how Nokia and Ericsson put out their latest phones for the GSM 900/1800 market, and release versions based on other technologies further down the line.
Meanwhile, here's a couple of good articles on the advantages Epoc also has from a technical perspective:
techweb.com
techweb.com
By no means am I predicting the death of Palm. I actually think that Palm will fare quite well in the North American handset market, and should have some success in the European and Asian markets; but for the time being, it appears very unlikely to me that a platform other than Epoc will be the OS of choice for the majority of 3G phones.
Eric
PS - Eric L., I'd agree that Certicom isn't in a tornado yet, but the potential for one to take place in the future's definitely there, given how much less of a drain ECC is on the limited processing/memory resources of a handheld device when compared to RSA. Granted, Phone.com currently uses RSA for its WAP browser, but it's, well, a WAP browser. Given that larger, more resource-draining secure wireless data transfers will most likely become the norm once display sizes get larger, bandwidth capabilities increase, and the tyrannical reign of King WAP is put to an end, this could make Certicom's technology a very valuable commodity, the same way long-haul optical networking became transformed from a sleepy, low-growth industry to one growing at a manic pace once the internet took flight. |
