Writing On Your Palm

Diversity or One Stop Shopping

30 June 2003

Should Palm create their own office suite or rely on third party vendors to do what they don't?

It started, as these things often do, with an idiot.

This particular idiot writes for the Inquirer, and he wrote a piece called "Is Palm Doomed?" Now, I know I've written similarly titled articles myself, and I'll be the first to admit that the jury is still out on my idiocy. But this article didn't make a whole lot of sense, and is only notable at all for the more reasoned discussion it sparked.

The gist of the article was that Palm was too-closely tied to rival Microsoft for synchronization options. The writer wanted to sync his Palm address book with Netscape Communicator's address book so he could use it with VersaMail on the Palm. He couldn't do it since Palm doesn't support syncing with Netscape, hence his argument that Palm is doomed for putting all their eggs in Microsoft's Outlook basket.

Putting aside for the moment that the writer was dead wrong, Pocket PC Thought's Ed Hansberry had an interesting comment on the whole situation. He argued that Palm was missing an opportunity by not providing a "Palm Office" of their own, much as Microsoft ties Microsoft Office to the Pocket PC. Relying on Microsoft's office products for much of Palm's business integration can't be wise.

That got me thinking. It wouldn't be hard for Palm to buy out or "permanently license" one of the PalmOS office suites and bundle a rebranded version of OpenOffice with Palm Desktop, calling the whole thing "Palm Office." The precedent is there: Palm's mail client was so behind the times that they bought MultiMail, renamed it VersaMail and integrated it into the OS.

But would coming out with their own office suite, even one that was file format compatible with Microsoft Office, be a good thing for Palm to do? I'm not sure it would be.

Let's face it, one of the biggest complaints people have about the Microsoft hegemony is the hegemony part. You can use any software you want on your Windows PC, as long as it's got the Microsoft logo on it. As it turns out, Microsoft now has the best office suite available for Windows, but mostly because they bullied the competition out of the market. Who knows where WordPerfect for Lotus might have ended up with their office suites if they hadn't been competing with the company that made the OS?

I don't want to see the "Palm Economy" go the same way. I like the fact that there are five major league word processors¹ on the market for PalmOS and I don't want to see any of them relegated to "also ran" status because Palm picks a winner and includes them with every device. Documents To Go is uncomfortably close to that already, but even it isn't included with Handspring's Treo line -- we'll see if that changes after the merger -- about half the Cliés out there or Palm's Zire line.

Dictating the "right" software to use isn't Palm's job. They're better off pushing the platform as a whole and emphasizing that unlike Windows, PalmOS is a computing platform where you still have some degree of choice in the tools you use. Documents to Go is great for a lot of people, but the lack of a spell checker or even a word count feature makes it suboptimal for me. WordSmith is a better choice for now, but all of the office suites for Palm OS are improving rapidly (funny how competition will do that). If the next version of Documents to Go, due out late summer, adds those features and native RTF file handling (something QuickWord already does half-way) then I'll switch.

I don't want to see PalmSource become another Microsoft. They have the chance to remain dominant in the handheld space, but if they're going to successfully stave off both Microsoft and Symbian, they can't do it alone. They'll need the diversity of the legions of Palm OS developers out there to stay ahead of the competition.

Jeff Kirvin
Jeff@writingonyourpalm.net
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Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today!