Palm OS Still Alive
MAY 19, 2006
6:00 AM -- After Palm Inc. 's release of the Treo 700w using Microsoft
Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - message board)'s Window Mobile operating system,
many people were wondering what would happen to the Palm OS operating
system. The fate of Palm OS was also clouded by PalmSource's decision
last year to discontinue work on Cobalt -- the high-end,
multi-threaded OS that was to take Palm into the future. PalmSource
indicated at that time its intention to use Linux as its high-end OS
platform.
The Treo smartphone line has sold extremely well, with some 3 million
Treo 600s and 650s in the market. And it's no wonder. The Treo 650
does a lot of things well, especially from a useability point of view.
So it was no surprise when Palm announced the 700p, an enhanced Palm
OS Treo that will support CDMA2000 EV-DO networks. The gadget will
address one of the 650's biggest weaknesses -- namely, its limited
memory. The 700p will have 128 Mbytes of memory. I'm sure Palm will
sell plenty of these. A UMTS/HSDPA version seems like a logical
development as well.
However, while Palm OS has its dedicated following, and is well suited
for light-weight applications such as organizer functions and email,
it simply does not have the horsepower of competing systems like
Windows Mobile 5, which is far more sophisticated in its multi-tasking
and networking capabilities. Mitigating this limitation is that most
users do not do much beyond organizer tasks, email, and some browsing
functions on their smartphones. So it makes complete sense for Palm OS
to keep being used for the moment. However, as enterprises slowly
figure out how to deploy more demanding applications for smartphones,
its likely that many of these will be targeted for alternative
smartphone platforms.
Peter Rysavy is President of Rysavy Research . Special to Unstrung
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