On Nov 28, 2007 8:27 PM, Craig Froehle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here's the thing: Android is going to be free. Palm has spent years > TRYING to develop nearly exactly what Android already is -- a > Linux-based phone platform. So a Palm phone running its new OS and a > Palm phone running Android would essentially provide the same > function. The only way Palm could differentiate itself is push its > Palm OS emulation layer to enable backward-compatibility with legacy > Palm OS apps. But they could do that with Android as well. The > advantage, though, is that all those developers making new Android > apps will most likely be ignoring Palm's new OS. And, there will be > scads of new phone makers using Android already, so Palm has no > advantage from isolating itself with some pseudo-open OS when a truly > open OS will be out there with a growing following. >
WILL Android be free? I sense a catch in there somewhere. Call it a hunch. Anyways - yes - it all makes sense - perfect sense. Palm running Android. Palm rescued. Just like the engadget letter said. But I think THEY think they can't do that because it would mean absolutely NO return on their investment of 5 years or so and maybe mounting debt that can't be paid off by licensing their developed technology to anyone. Perhaps they think they can make the better OS and make money off it - even if it's not the better OS for long. Anyways ... can they put in a backwards compatibility layer? Isn't that the IP of Access? If anything here the money would be made by Access selling that compatibility layer to Android (and iPhone and WinMo and RIM) customers to get them to switch or licensing to the first Treo-like handset that runs Android that comes out from HTC next year. > > Palm will either join Android (and I don't mean jump exclusively to > Android, any more than they abandoned Palm OS when they started > offering WinMo phones) or they will dry up and blow away. Remember > Tandy computers? I didn't think so. They didn't believe in > capitalizing on emerging standards, either. > > What emerging standards was Tandy negligent in capitalizing on? -- ============================== War Eagle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
