Comments on: palmOne to Cut 12% of Staff, Shifting to Smartphones

In my geographic area there are no viable bluetooth phone options. GSM coverage is awful, Verizon/CDMA is the only real game in town. There is a dearth of bluetooth phones. Unfortunately Verizon doesn't officially support/provide the Treo600, though I could buy it independently. Around here, the stars haven't aligned yet for phone/pda integration, with two devices or integrated to one. There are older technology solutions like Kycocera 7135, but I would want the latest OS and more horsepower. The big action for pda/phones is in metropolis, not rural America, and there is no indication of change any time soon.

I still think Microshaft is/was involved somehow with their SPOT watch conveniently and (not?) coincidentally showing up once the Palm watch disappeared.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19914

I can't comment on the status of any particular product; that's up to the licensees. But I can tell you that we have a strong, growing, continuing relationship with Fossil.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.

>>> I can't comment on the status of any particular product; that's up to the licensees. But I can tell you that we have a strong, growing, continuing relationship with Fossil.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.<<<

Good god, not another watch. Here is a hint: Nobody wants to wear a watch that need to be recharge every half a year, let alone every day. That't what a cellphone is for.

"Palm4u @ 1/21/2004 5:05:36 PM

Amen to that!

Who's gonna want to wear a stupid looking techie watch?

I think people would rather save some money and buy a nice Tag or Citizen or Seiko or whatever. Watches are for telling time or a status symbol.
"

If people were all like you, we'd never ever have had digital watch faces... change happens. There will be more of these kind of devices, because the electronic device that people carry on them the greatest percentage of the time is: dum-dum - the watch. Just wait.

-Davy Fields
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palm_OS_5/

Two thoughts here, and I'll start with the "who would want that anyway?" arguement.

I can't really see entering data on the watch as being a picnic, but I CAN see it as an extremely convenient way to carry the data from your PDA with you when you leave the PDA behind (i.e. a trip to the beach, water park, camping, although mine goes with me then, etc.) This way you still have all your contact info, memos, appointments, etc. and you can beam and receive the data. It would never replace my PDA, but would be a wonderful companion, as long as you could fit the data on the screen in a reasonably easy to read manner.

Now, for the other part, and I'll quote:

>"I put as much faith in your conspiracy theories of MS leaning on Fossil to kill the Palm watch as I do in my personal theories about MS (or others) leaning on SanDisk and/or Sandisk's out-sourced driver development team for the Palm Wi-Fi SD card.

That is to say, I strongly agree with both theories!"<

Ok, but the article says that Fossil's OEM manufacturer is/was Flextronics. Not a big deal until you realize that Flextronics is the *sole* manufacturer of MicroSoft's X-Box. That's right, they have a huge factory down near Mexico City where they manufacture the X-Box. The game console market is more lucrative than *any* PDA market, any day of the week. It's quite believable to think that perhaps MS put some pressure on Flextronics to drop the Fossil watch, which would be a niche product, or lose the X-Box come contract renewal time, especially since MS is creating the SPOT, which they have had in the works for at least a couple of years now. Where would Fossil take this to? MS has their hooks into nearly every OEM shop out there, and this is, like I said, only a niche product, not worth risking more lucrative contracts for fabbing mice, game controllers, keyboards, gaming consoles, etc.

Just my $0.02. It's anybody's guess what the truth of the matter really is, but the above scenario is not unbelievable.

_________________
Sean

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

Don't be retarded. The Fossil watch would have lasted about a week on the market before it got laughed out of existence. Ranks right up there (down there?) with the Segway, Mercury Marauder, Nokia NGage as for boneheads only.

It's amazing that products like this ever go past the prototype stage. No one ever stops to think, "Is anyone REALLY going to pay cash for this?"

It's just too big.

Mercedez-Benz more or less invented the automobile. Last time I checked though they're not the only ones doing it well.

what rumor? the one Nagel made in europe last year? That got shut down so fast from SE PR office, it's not even funny.

It's not a rumor, it's a failed hype.

what's the big deal? Just about EVERY mobile phone that is on the market today can be unlocked through the use of PC software or mail-in unlocking services.

Heck, back when I had a Kyocera 6035, I was able to unlock it so that I could jump from Sprint to Verizon to get 2-way SMS.

what's the big deal? Just about EVERY mobile phone that is on the market today can be unlocked through the use of PC software or mail-in unlocking services.

The big deal is that (two years after Handspring) Palm saw the writing on the wall and rushed to reinvent themselves as a cellphone company. But they have no cred with the carriers and were between a rock and a hard place, so they signed a series of horrible deals with the major carriers the said basically that Palm had t

It's just too big.

>>what rumor? the one Nagel made in europe last year? That got shut down so fast from SE PR office, it's not even funny. It's not a rumor, it's a failed hype.

BS. SE shot it down in order to calm suspicion from potential p900 buyers. With that new smartphone, you don't want details of a new one with a new OS already leaking and disrupting buyers.

If Nagel was LYING about that, then PalmSource could possibly get sued by SE for potentially disrupting sales. If they really ARE in talks, then it would make sense for SE to say **** to Nagel, but not take any further action until the p1000 with Palm OS 5 Phone Edition is released and p900 and Symbian are put to rest.

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + T616

Normally "trimming fat" can be positive, but in this case Handspring and Palm have already trimmed fat last year.

I can't help but wonder if now they have to start cutting into the bone to save pennies.

>"Normally "trimming fat" can be positive, but in this case Handspring and Palm have already trimmed fat last year.

I can't help but wonder if now they have to start cutting into the bone to save pennies."<

Oh please. You're reading way too much into this. Layoffs nearly *always* happen when two companies merge, because once merged there is a lot of redundancy in the merged staff because you essentially pushed two companies with the same departments together into one company with one of each of those departments instead of two. So naturally, since keeping all that redundancy is needessly expensive, you need to pare down a bit. Thing is, these people knew (or should have known) that layoffs would be coming and everyone in the company should have already had their resumes updated in the even they were one of the "unlucky 100".

Layoffs are never pretty, but business is about making money for the shareholders, and that unfortunately is a passionless endeavor. Having been unemployed recently I can certainly empathize with those who lost their jobs. At the same time if they weren't wise, not bothering to prepare for the possibility when layoffs were an obvious possibility with the merger, I don't have much sympathy there. Hell, I would have had interviews already.

_________________
Sean

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

"Investors apparently see it that way too."

Investors love layoffs. Investors love offshore outsourcing, too. I don't much care what investors think.

Scott

http://Tapland.com
- Tapwave Zodiac News, Reviews, & Discussion -

i agree with you,
i don't get all this excitement; smartphones are just too uncomfortable to handle, the only way i see myself getting one is if it had a bt headset which after i am done i can put back into the pda (sort of like a stylus).

Well, as for me, if there were a Treo like device WITHOUT the keyboard (just a phone keypad pluse the typical 4 button + 5-way central button) and a universal connector, and 320x320 resolution, I'd already own it.

You guys are way in the minority. Less than 5% of us carry PDA's more than 25% of us carry cellphones (give or take a few precent). Most people do not even realize they need a PDA, but would not complain if one was built into their phone. Most people only want to carry one device.

I am a long time PDA user since the Palm's begining. I got a Treo600 in October. I thought I would hate the 160x160 display, and thought I would never get used to the keyboard. The truth is the screen is OK and keyboard rocks. I can type almost twice as fast as I could ever do Graffiti (I was pretty fast at Graffiti)
This phone does everything my Tungsten T did and does some things a lot better. I'm sold on carrying 1 device. Give me a new version of the Treo with 360x360 Bluetooth and a 1 megapixal camera.

Pilot 1000 -> Pilot 5000 -> Palm Pilot Professional -> HP620LX-> TRG Pro -> Palm V -> Palm Vx -> Palm m505 -> Palm i705 -> Palm TT - Samsung i500 -> Treo 600

rc46, sorry, i doubt that ppl will go for the phone just because it has a pda functionality . I have yet to meet a person who uses their phone's calendar. Fact is, using the phone as the phone is more important to most ppl and when you double the size/reduce batter life most won't care for all those extra features cuz it's primary function is harder to use.

I'm sorry, but I think the only reason smartphones are taking off is the same reason people chase after rainbows. It's a nice thought... but you never really get there.

The reality is, cell phones and PDAs serve two separate functions. While there is some overlap, it isn't possible to cash in on that by combining them. Bluetooth is the real answer, not convergence.

A PDA needs a big enough screen to be useful, with LOTS of memory. Hard buttons aren't really necessary, but a few are ok. A cell phone on the other hand needs to be small enough to be handy and unobtrusive. It needs to fit nicely in the hand, small enough to tuck away in a shirt pocket or purse, or strap out of the way on the belt. The screen needn't be any bigger than necessary to show a few lines out of the address book, but just about everyone is going to want real hard buttons for the numbers.

A cell phone the size of a usable PDA is too big a cell phone. A PDA the size of a usable cell phone is too small a PDA. It's rather simple fact, and I wish we could move beyond the ridiculous idea of convergence which ignores this and instead get better Bluetooth adoption between cell phones and PDAs. PalmOne is making a mistake here.

And often, you don't need both. Usually it'll be the case of leaving the PDA at home and just using the cell phone. This is common enough to warrant separate devices. How often do you REALLY need to access your PDA from your cell phone?

The smartphone ranks up there with the combo fax/print/copier units you see everywhere. They attempt to do everything with one unit and market themselves on that appeal, when in reality they do everything poorly and nothing well, a fact the consumer doesn't realize until after the purchase. Yet sales continue, because everything likes the dream, even if it's not a reality.

Palm: instead of making more smartphones, give us a PDA with the form-factor of the m515, the screen of the T3, BT and WiFi, virtual grafitti and no slider (and built like the Tungsten T and not like the E). 64MB is fine, as is 400MHz. The technical/space/power issues are solved by using an OLED screen which doesn't need backlight and is as thin as a sheet of paper, while at the same time using tons less power. Switching from LCD to OLED will give you TONS more space inside that case and tons more juice from the lithium-polymer battery. Ask $500 or even $600 for it if you want, but CREATE IT and make it EXIST... then let the market decide. You might be surprised.

Well said. And Palm's other problem is that cellphone manufacturers have massive resources and the money to out-innovate Palm quickly. The Treo 600's technological lead won't last another 6 months.

It's just too big.

Wollombi, wouldn't you say that the lack of an SD slot kills that i500's PDA functionality (it certainly would for me, if for no other reason than I keep 100's of jpegs on SD for both business and personal reasons).

Also, the lack of an exterior caller ID LCD also hampers the Samsung's usefulness as a cell phone (again, at least for me it would).

At least it has a sufficiently juiced-up Dragonball CPU, a decent screen (higher res than any of the Treos), and Graffiti 1!

The new Treo will not have a 320x320 screen.

Back in the days of a Visor, there were the rumours of the Visor Prism II with a nice hi-res colour screen. The rumours weren't very persuasive, because back then, only Sony was doing it and I don't think it was even colour either (oh, HandEra was too, and it definitely was black-and-white).

Then came the Treo 180. OK, black and white lo-res screen. It was widely speculated that the colour Treo would have a hi-res screen. After all, Sony was doing really well out of it. The Treo 270 came along. Lo-res screen. Then rumours of the new CDMA Treo. "Come on, Handspring," we said, they had to have developed hi-res technology by then. The Treo 300 and Treo 90 came out. Lo-res.

A few years pass. The new Treo 600 appears on the horizon. "It surely has to have a hi-res screen," we say. It runs Palm OS 5, and to date, all OS 5 devices have a hi-res screen. Palm has introduced its Tungsten T and T2, both have hi-res screens, and Palm is making a mint. Then someone sees a Treo 600 at a trade show. Lo-res.

Handspring has never introduced a hi-res device and I am sure that they never will. I think they are just vindictive; nothing else explains it. (They've keep making excuses.) If you want a Treo and you want a hi-res screen, you're never going to get it... either get a Treo as it is, or get another device, but quit waiting for something that's not going to come.

P.S. I am a very happy Treo 600 owner... once you accept the lo-res screen, it's a weight off your shoulders :-)

>Handspring has never introduced a hi-res device and I am sure that they never will

That's right. Because Handspring doesn't exist anymore.

PalmOne has lots of hi-res devices with great screens. "Their" Treo will have 320x320 (I speculate...)

-Kevin Crossman, Palm Powered Software Champion

You do realize that *PalmOne* (layoffs) and *PalmSource* (OS6) are two different companies, right?

That means there is no connection between the pink slips and the new OS.

-G

>"Ohhhh no I bought all those stocks........"<

LOL! =)

_________________
Sean

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.