Mike Davis wrote:
> Follow-up to my own question. I notice that the people that have
> contacted me are ones who have not been with the palm for years like
> some of us. They are the more recent users of PDAs.
>
This makes more sense. The Compaq iPaq is selling quite well but the problem is that
Period of Ownership is a lot less for PDAs
than say desktop PCs. Microsoft is assuming they are marketing a piece of minor
capital equipment rather than what they are really
selling -- a piece of consumer electronics. Also, in consumer electronics, there is
very little regular use since the device is so
portable. Also, the port of their monopolistic application MS Word and MS Excel is
not as valuable as on a desktop.
My guess is that these new users with their "safe" Microsoft / Compaq purchase will
soon find out there isn't much in software for
it and eventually get less and less use out of the machine. I'd like to be in touch
with these new PocketPC purchasers three to six
months from now to see how much they are using it then.
I have a couple of comments to you facts below.
>
> > I wonder what the Palm market share is currently.
> >
> > There was a discussion a while back where people basically discounted
> > the effect of the PocketPC on the market; stating pricing, etc as the
> > reason not to worry.
> >
> > But I have seen some thing of late that worry me, a bit, as a
> > developer for the Palm.
> >
> > 1) I am receiving a disturbingly high number of people writing me
> > saying that they have sold their Palms in favor of the PocketPC.
Exactly who are these "people". Are they the latest gadget folks or real users of the
technology.
>
> >
> > 2) Prices of color PocketPCs are dropping.
Let's see some pricing and fact here. The IIIc has just dropped in price too.
>
> >
> > 3) Palm not keeping up with demands (color, sound, etc).
Where is this demand coming from? Is it from someone with real use for it or the
techie "snobarati" that wants a laptop shoved in
their PDA with infinite battery life?
> >
> > 4) Palm beginning to try and charge for support.
This is actually a good thing. Palm is starting to do enough volume where there are
people with actually money, budgets and
responsibility starting to use the machine in a business manner instead of just a
personal campus gadget. This shows to me that the
Palm Economy is starting to shift from early adopter to mainstream.
Thus, there are people more than willing to pay for support since they will get
something in exchange for their cash -- a working
Palm device and a more knowledge of its use. Not everyone is willing to search every
Internet web site to pull down latest fact
since they have other things to do with their time. I keep on wondering when the
support contracts for large groups of corporate
users will start to be signed.
>
> >
> > Anyone know what Palms market share is right now?
Considering where you look the number bounces around 65% to 85% and also varies on the
metric used. Personally, the most
significant factor is "percentage of PalmOS licensed devices" out there in PDA sales.
Some of these survey companies make the
mistake of taking Palm branded devices and Handspring Visors as competing products.
Steve
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