Microsoft need to buy out the PALM division from COMS
Actually, Apple is interested in buying the Palm division. A while back Steve Jobs was quoted (can't remember where) as saying that he asked, but COM was not interested in selling.
Anyway, CE is far from being left out of the sandbox. I think MSFT has plans to get this OS into a very large number of appliances, including motor vehicles.
There is also a push from the cellular phone industry to invade the PDA market with what is known as "personal communicators", devices that function as a cellular phone as well as a PDA (think Star Trek). One interesting group, formed by Psion, Nokia, and Motorola have developed a standard for using personal communicators to communicate with PCs over a wireless network. I think the group has also developed an OS for this. Apparently, MSFT approached Nokia and Motorola with hopes of having them adopt CE as the OS, but was quickly rebuffed. MSFT has since teamed up with Qualcomm to dominate the world of the personal communicator. I think this will be a much larger market than 3COM's Palm, simply because there are many more users of cell phones than there are of the Palm. There is an established market, and as users upgrade, the newer cell phones are likely to come with Internet / Web access, fax capabilities, personal information management, etc. It's already happening; in fact Nokia and CNN have an agreement to provide live feed of CNN news through the former's phones. And now people are talking colour for these devices! Articles are beginning to predict that by 2003, personal communicators will be outselling PCs.
Bottom line: I wouldn't bet the farm on COM. There is a LOT of competition out there with very deep pockets and a huge established market to boot.
Winston |
