On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 01:13:24PM -0400, McCollister, Mike wrote:
> What if Microsoft offerend a free Pocket PC and development kit to Palm
> developers who have developed three (or insert number here) more Palm apps
> with no obligation to write applications for Pocket PC? How many of us
> would take the offer? Would this be unfair? I've had a number of vendors
> give me free devices and development software to get me going.
I would take the offer, sell the Pocket PC on EBay and buy a IIIc or
Vx with the proceeds :). Assuming someone would pay enough...
I don't think it would be unfair, but the hardware is still costly.
The "entry" pocket PC is a large percentage of the cost of a real
laptop, and you aren't going to like working with excel on the small
screen (and it simultaneously kills anything like Quicksheet - a PDA
optimized spreadsheet).
HP is good, but they won't be able to squeeze the Pocket PC into the
Palm V size/weight, nor the IIIe cost factor.
Even before the "PDA" WinCE devices, you had a market segment above
the price and performance point of Palm. Many were bigger and with
keyboards but worked well as an ultralight laptop.
The first CE devices were clunky clones of palm and were still too
expensive, but were within the same range.
The current Pocket PC devices have gone back into that higher price
target market.
Also, did MicroSoft uncripple their Pocket IE/Outlook/XL/Word
programs? They purposely left some things out so that they wouldn't
hurt the (real x68) laptop market. If they fixed them, then Microsoft
has changed strategies again.
But to return to my point, the Palm and Handspring (TRG, etc.) devices
fall into the sub-$200 to $400+ range, and the IIIc is a deluxe Palm
but still ends below where the Pocket PCs start.
Even if they can push hardware costs down, the same will apply for
Palm, so you will find $20 Palms in blister packs in drugstores long
before a $200 Pocket PC comes out. Fast CPU chips, and the extra Ram
and Rom chips cost extra money. And when you require hi-rez color LCD
and other hardware for multimedia, you aren't going to get the price
down easily. (The nearer competitors are the less flexible but
cheaper PDAs).
I don't know how much money Palm v.s. HP (or Casio or Compaq) make on
each of their products, but given the difference in retail prices
v.s. price of engineering (new hardware for a new CE version?) and
components, the profit margins must be a lot higher for Palm and they
are selling a large number so even have the economy of scale
advantage.
So I don't expect there to be a lot of PocketPCs out there; and they
aren't all the same (so I can't distribute just one program and have
it run on old Ninos and new Jornadas). If it was free, the Windows
API is a lot heavier than Palm, so I might or might not port my
applications. A Free $500 device won't replace $5K in labor if that
is required to actually do the port, and for the commercial authors,
will they get the investment back?
And to take one of my apps - I have a MIDI player - something that the
CE devices probably can't do (because of hardware limitations). Why
should I port something that as soon as I figure out how to make it
work on a Pocket PC, Microsoft will add that as a feature to the Media
Player as soon as I've solved all the interesting engineering problems
and created a market?
Or better yet, lets say I wanted to take the hardware and port Linux
to it (note: there is a version for Palm hardware). Could I? Are the
details available? Or is it another proprietary platform? I might
specialize it and remove the overhead - but then where does Microsoft
come in?
And assume that Microsoft did create a developers base. The next
version of the OS and DevTools might then require a big-buck
subscription to a MSDN like service. It's free now, but a lot of
Microsoft products have been increasing in price (TCO) as time goes
by. The new OS wouldn't work with the old developers tools - forced
upgrades are one of Microsofts better known tactics.
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