Mark:
Early picture of the Samsung Palm based PDA/cell phone due out this summer (posted on the Qualcomm thread by Carter Patterson):
samsungusa.com
This will be the second Asian cell phone manufacturer to go with Palm. I would not be surprised to see PC makers Fujitsu, NEC and Toshiba to join Sony and go with the Palm OS when they announce their PDA offerings.
The one combo product that's not just in the cell phone manufacturers hands is the "clean slate" MOT/PALM device supposedly under joint development and slated for market sometime in 2002. My guess is that it's on that kind of development schedule partly because it needs the faster Strongarm processor and Palm OS 5.0, but based on the Kyocera and Samsung product roll outs this year (they were announced last year sometime) it looks like it takes a year or more to get one of these things designed, developed, prototyped and into mass production.
This combo device market will develop, but it will take time. I think it's clear that eventually, as faster wireless networks come on line, all cell phones will have some PDA type functionality built in, and the more rapidly Palm builds its user base, the more the major cell phone makers will be inclined to put their PDA functions on the Palm OS platform. Palm has already helped wean MOT (helped no doubt by MOT's woes) from its Symbian EPOC based device development, but Nokia and Ericsson may be more difficult, and maybe non-starters for Palm, despite Nokia's equity stake in Palm. The Euro-land cell phone makers seem to have an aversion to anything not invented or developed within their own domain.
It'll be interesting to see how the Kyocera and Samsung Palm based devices sell. If they become "hot ticket" items, other manufacturers will take notice.
David T. |
