I believe Palm sits on the edge of either becoming a great software company for mobile devices (phones, game, palm type, etc.) into the future or will fail a slow passing over time depending upon how they react to several issues concerning development and others concerning market share.
Development: Although there are many development platforms available for the Palm OS i.e. (PDA Toolbox Advance, NSBasic, HB++, CASL Pro, etc.) to provide serious performance for enterprise applications, games, etc. C or C++ are the only way to assure survival is these areas. The development has fallen behind in this area by not having strong enough support for C++ libraries that extend Rapid Application Development to those who have long ago put their C only books on the shelf to collect dust. You can talk about effiecencies, memory, etc. but face it, memory is not as much as problem any more i.e. the T5, storage devices, etc. and the overhead of a good C++ libary is minimal to an application. There have never been any articles written to convince people they should abondon C++ libaries and functionality for C in other enviornmments. Another point is documentation for development in using C or C++. Yes, Palm has a lot of information concerning the APIs and have convered the area of design with great zeal but all the books available are old , outdated, and have fallen behind. This should concern people all on its own. Why do authors stop writing for a particular subject, because publisher's don't see a market there anymore for them to sell to. Market: There is no denying Microsoft is using their money, relationships, development tools, etc. to gain market share against Palm devices. I have seen more and more people trade in their Palm devices for iPaqs and other similiar devices runing Windows Mobile 2003. I have had two people in the office who had always used Palm and recently went and bought iPaqs. They claimed that these devices came closer to fitting their needs and had more features and functionality. I have not been able to move them with any of my arguments. They can always show me comparible or better applications and tools on their devices than what I have on mine. (I currently own a Zire 72) The other area is what everybody has been wondering about: Where are devices running the new 6.01 Palm OS. The answer is there aren't any and I am wondering whether it isn't starting to sound like delivery dates compariable to the Longhorn OS from Microsoft. To excel you have to be first, you have to be very good with features and functionality and you have to be willing to define the marketplace you exist in. If you don't do that your competitors will overtime pass you up and than leave you wondering what happened. (re: Democrats wondering what bus hit them during this year's election). I have been a long term hold out and believer in Palm but I am beginning to wonder if I am putting my time and money in the right market. You cannot deny the ever increasing market share that Microsoft type devices are winning as well as the amount and variety of software available on the market. Developers are going to spend time where they believe they can make a good return for their investment and where the numbers show they have a good chance of staying around. I believe Palm needs to ask themselves the question "Are we willing to out inovate, out perform and out think the competitors or will we go on doing what we have always done because it's always worked before." Regards, Michael W. -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
