Oh, Good Lord...
Sunrise News: "I have abandoned the development of the PalmOS version of my viewer, at least for now. The main reason is that I seriously doubt whether PalmOS will survive in the long term. At any rate, the news of late has not been favourable: PalmOS's dwindling market share, Sony exiting the US and European markets, PalmOne investigating the use of Linux and WinCE in their products, no OS6 devices on the horizon. Hopefully my assessment will turn out to be wrong, but I simply cannot afford to spend time, energy and money into marketing, supporting and maintaining a product for a platform with such an uncertain future.
I'm pouring all my energy into the Windows CE version of the viewer. I expect to release the public beta in February.
I'm also investigating the feasibility of creating versions for SymbianOS and RIM Blackberry. These are attractive platforms from a marketing standpoint as they are both seeing significant growth."
SO IS PALMOS!!! It's that the growth is mostly in smartphones, which the BS numbers you state don't count!
How many people have written off PalmOS, only to be surprised and chagrined later?
I'm pouring all my energy into the Windows CE version of the viewer. I expect to release the public beta in February.
I'm also investigating the feasibility of creating versions for SymbianOS and RIM Blackberry. These are attractive platforms from a marketing standpoint as they are both seeing significant growth."
SO IS PALMOS!!! It's that the growth is mostly in smartphones, which the BS numbers you state don't count!
How many people have written off PalmOS, only to be surprised and chagrined later?
4 Comments:
At 5:15 PM, Philip Storry said…
Well, it's his business. Personally, not one I'd invest in - there's no sense in this decision if you ask me.
So Palm's market share has dipped slightly, according to one study. Making a business decision immediately after one study seems a little rash.
I'm not sure a Windows CE viewer is a good idea. His product does off-line viewing. Many Windows CE devices come with Wi-Fi as standard, so there's less need for offline viewing. You may want to "top up" before you leave your Wi-Fi coverage, but that's a pretty small number of users - who probably could do other things on the train anyway. How many of them will want to pay for reading websites offline? So that's probably a minority portion of a mostly majority market.
Symbian is mostly used in SmartPhones. Same problem, except that they have much wider coverage than the Windows CE market. Not a good market. Do I want an already out-of-date capture of a news site that I got on my PC, or do I just want to browse only the parts that I want to read whilst they're up to date on my GPRS connection? He's relying on people trading off miserliness on their data rates with use of storage and a willingness to accept out of date information. Storage may be cheap, but I know which one I choose.
RIM Blackberry? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*wipes tears from eyes*
Oh, that's good. Yeah, because I'm going to buy software for the Blackberry my company provides me with.
Let's face facts - Blackberries are business tools. They're not fantastic PDAs - I know, because I'm using it as one at work. If it was just a PDA, I'd have thrown it out ages ago. What makes it valuable is the fact that it gives me my email "as it arrives" on my mail servers. (I'm the email admininistrator, so I have to have one to support problems on the server. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.)
Anyway, the problem with the RIM Blackberry growth is simply that most of the owners aren't actual people - and corporations don't make impulse purchases of single copies of 30 buck software. Software for Blackberries will be better marketed at the multi-license executive end of the scale, I think. Which this doesn't appear to be.
Oh, and there's all the problems that came with Symbian as well. This makes RIM Blackberry very unattractive to a developer of personal software, I think...
Lastly, there's the Palm market. Which, contrary to popular belief, is not about to throw all its devices away just because of a survey. And has less Wi-Fi access anyway. So, that would be a majority of that market. That's being thrown away.
He's lucky he doesn't have shareholders to explain this to, I think. It's a shame, though - reading his website, he seems like a nice person. I'm sorry he's decided to take his talent and his expertise elsewhere. However, the Palm market has a thriving development pool that will probably step up to the plate to meet the demand, so it's only a minor setback really...
(Standard disclaimer - I've never seen the point of offline reading on a PDA. I tried Avantgo and others, and found the whole thing a little odd. What I'd want to read is news sites, and I'm now reading out-of-date news sites. If I wanted out of date news, I'd buy a newspaper and read that - it won't use up my batteries. Plus it comes with opinion columns, obituaries, humour and a wide spready of news coverage. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.)
At 8:41 PM, Tory said…
Yeah, and unfortunately he killed jPluck... Guess I'm glad I held onto the old install files. jPluck was so much better than plucker desktop.
FUD. Congradulations, M$...you're winning again.
Idiots.
At 5:02 AM, Anonymous said…
I'm writing it off, now.
I develop very specialised software primarily for myself, but sold to a restricted client base.
I'm tired of hardware that fails too easily (my latest Tungsten E lasted just five months before the screen whining and lost graffiti capability set in), and Palm's total inability to address market demands such as Wi-Fi drivers. Who do they have pretending to be developers, a bunch of outsourced Indians????
Anyway, I needed another handheld for my own use. The Tungsten T5 offers too little, and seems to be sourced from the same supplier as the rubbish hardware of the TE. The TC is OK, but I can get a HP 4150 for the same price.
I was still leaning towards the TC, but then I read that PalmOne is looking at Windows for the Treo, and that Cobalt isn't coming anytime soon.
Is anyone running this company for its CUSTOMERS any more?
Well, I don't really care. I've made the decision to go to the Microsoft platform. I can always come back next year, if Palm gets its act together, but I just can't see that happening.
The order for NSBASIC/CE is in already, and we'll start migrating code next week.
Bye bye, Palm. It was great while it lasted.
At 7:52 AM, Tory said…
You know, my experiences with WinMobile have been less than stellar (sorry, Lee). I was sincerely glad I didn't use my iPaq for anything mission critical. Even my wife, who was at first enamoured with the big screen, chose to switch back to her Clie TJ-25 after a couple of weeks (although that may not count for much, as she's decided that she's a pen and paper person now).
I do agree on one point. PalmOne, while it may be making what it believes are good marketing decisions, is not listening to its customers. I don't want to have to shell out $500+ USD for a T5 with WiFi. That's just not cool. And now that I have 802.11g in my home, I'm seriously looking.
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