The big market for us with the windows ce devices are wireless symbol
devices. Symbol also sells the palm wireless device but the government's
purchase order is for pocketpc's, not palms. Personally I sell and develop
10 palmOS- to 1 CE device and with network appliances becoming more
understood the palm should gain a stronger audience. Simplicity and
reliability is tough to beat.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve
Sabram
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 4:02 PM
To: Palm Developer Forum
Subject: Re: Palm PDA - Market Share ???
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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