Opinion: Mike Cane's Predictions for the Palm OS in 2004

> On points 2 & 3, I agree that more adverts of PalmPowered devices doing things like spreadsheets or playing full screen video/MP3s might help their perception.

I'd say palmOne has a start on that with their web ads of the T3 doing spreadsheets to emphasize the larger screen. Now they (and other licensees) need to bring more of that to Joe Public's attention, not just techies.

Oracle has no retail presence; and Ellison has gotten burned by most of his investments in hardware, so my guess is that a PalmOne/Oracle deal is quite unlikely. However, both Ellison and IBM might like to make PalmSource a stronger surrogate opponent against Gates and company, given that linux has no traction in the handheld space. Of course, the killer combination in the handheld space would be for Apple and Nintendo to team up for an iGamePodBoy(tm) family of entertainment PDA's.

The whole reason palmOne spun off of PalmSource is because if they are together, licencees are discouraged. Although I think Garmin would stay with PalmOS, I think that Sony will pioneer PPCs with VGA (after getting mega-pissed at Palm being 1 again (no relation to palmOne ;) ) ). Yes, I know Toshiba has the e80X, but I think Sony will really main-stream it.

Oh, and ... read my other comments.

Chess or Chyes
Palm Cow loves it.
CHYES! kevin707s@mchsi.com

If Sony does PPC it will have ... drumroll! ... Memory Schtick!

And what would distinguish their PPC from other PPCs, other than that? Toshiba is already to PPC OS what Sony has been to Palm OS.

I think this is a stupid prediction. It's not going to happen. Even if Oracle wants to be part of the PDA scene they'll just buy PalmSource not palmOne. Oracle is a software company not a hardware company. And combining PalmSource palmOne under the same ownership will kill PalmOS.

Interesting about Sony but why assume they switch to PPC? They already have a strong showing with Symbian and the major expansion is already happening in the smartphone arena - as with the Treo - somewhere where Microsoft are trailing, as ever. In Q3 for Europe and Asia the sales of the Sony Ericsson P800 alone were
something like 2/3 of Palm's total sales.

Cheers,
Jejoma

Fujitsu I said *last* year. So if they come *do* come in, they're a year late by my calendar...

Fujitsu already has a Windows CE .NET device on the market... I doubt they'll jump ship any time soon.

>>Fujitsu already has a Windows CE .NET device on the market... I doubt they'll jump ship any time soon.
Who said they have to jump ship? Samsung has both Palm OS and PPC devices.

I still haven't finished predictions yet. Just you wait! Other than the Sony prediction, our predictions won't look very similar.

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My blog: www.pocketfactory.com

I wondered why you made a point of putting that notice up front!

More cool predictions, let's see what happens!

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I held off publishing mine this year because last year, suspiciously, everyone published theirs (including people who had *never* done any *before* -- I'll not name any sites...) after I did mine. I wanted to play chicken with everyone else.
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so many of your past predictions came true, i can see why people would want to steal your ideas. i'm using the palm version of microsoft reader and calligrapher on the fujitsu palm now. ::rolls eyes::

you didn't get hardly any thing right. every one copied you but some how did better?

who are you and why should i care what your opinions are? how long have you worked in the pda industry?

We're the people we've been waiting for

The article is *NOT* as I wrote it.

When I typed the above message, I hadn't proofed it. The point of my original message was to state that although it was published late, I had *not* seen other's predictions and gone back to change my own. (I have since read another site's predictions and see they are saying tiny HDs will be in PDAs -- something I said *last year*!)

Several paragraphs are in fact MANGLED and I've emailed Ryan to find out WTF happened. Specifically, predictions 3 and 4.

Geez, did 3 and 4 make *sense* to you people?!!?

PlasticMan (I'm sure the handle fits), I don't give an eff whether you care about the predictions or me or not. But I noticed you GAVE ME YOUR TIME TO READ THEM.

Sucker!

looks like you mangled the html in #3

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When Foo Fighter first said Sony would quit Palm OS, I
laughed. And I continued to laugh until I saw Sony's TJ series. They look like the beginning of a retreat from Palm OS. I expect 2004 to mark the death of the CLIE in favor of the handheld
PlayStation (with "Play OS"?).
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We're the people we've been waiting for

I had to read the HTML source to understand 3 and 4. It appears that the link tags are screwed up somehow (although they look fine in the source to me).

Mike, it hurts your credibilty to throw around insults with the rest of the morons.

Every time I see a cool article by you it's completely offset by the way you handle the comments.

If you are going to be a dude, be a dude, not one of the rabble.

Ryan is AWOL again. If he can't keep PIC going properly, he should SHUT IT DOWN, dammit. Better to kill it altogether than to see if slowly sink into a slum....

Here are the UNMANGLED paragraphs with the links forcibly embedded...

3) Sony Cuts Back

When Foo Fighter

http://www.pocketfactory.com

first said Sony would quit Palm OS, I laughed. And I continued to laugh

http://tinyurl.com/2z5sr

until I saw Sony's TJ series. They look like the beginning of a retreat from Palm OS. I expect 2004 to mark the death of the CLIE in favor of the handheld
PlayStation

http://tinyurl.com/2gbmt

(with "Play OS"?).

4) palmOne Does Infomercials
Before Larry Ellison takes out his wallet to buy The
Two Palms, palmOne will start an infomercial blitz on
cable and late-night broadcast TV. In an effort to
sell higher-end units to the general public, palmOne
will go all-out to show the kinds of things its PDAs
can do. And also why everyone should have a Treo

http://tinyurl.com/3g5uq

instead of an ordinary cellphone.

http://tinyurl.com/ytcwm

(Microsoft will follow suit -- but only for its atrocious

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6355

Smurfphone,
leaving Pocket PC users frustrated [as usual!].)

Less than an hour after my post, Ryan mysteriously shows up to fix the mangled paragraphs. 2004 is real keen so far!

sorry I wasn't on duty, friday night!!!

Hair of the Dog this AM?

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I have since read another site's predictions and see they are saying tiny HDs will be in PDAs -- something I said *last year*!)
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you said they would be in pdas during 2003. you were wrong, they aren't. if they are in a pda this year, that other site will be right, cause that's what they said. (you will still be wrong, you got the wrong year.)


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We're the people we've been waiting for

Once a prediction is made, it stands until it is *fulfilled*.

Just because the baby didn't come 9 months on the dot, does that mean it's not coming at all?

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mikecane said:
Late in 2002, when ARMed/BeOSed Palms start to appear, Sony will introduce the first Palm OS PDA with a built-in hard drive.
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when you make predictions for 2002 that don't come true in 2002, then you're predictions are wrong.

if you had predicted the florida marlins would win the world series in 2002, you wou be wrong, even though they won in 2003.

if your predictions are meant to last forever, say that. "some day there will be a pda with a mini hd." If you say its going to happen in 2002, you don't get to say you were right if it happens in 2004.


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We're the people we've been waiting for

Bicker, bicker, bicker.

Aren't you special.

:-)

UZI4U182@suscom.net
Main PDA: NX70v + WL100
http://clieflash.shorturl.com

"Opera? Sorry, your fantasy won't come true. Start a petition, show there's people willing to buy, and then you might get them interested. At the moment, NetFront reigns and is officially licensed by PalmSource. Give them a good reason to try to join."

Hey, if they have versions of their browser for four smartphone families...

(Why do some people say you can kill two birds with one stone when it's hard enough killing one bird with two stones?)

"Apple? Nope. When was the last time they used technology that wasn't their own?"

Mac OS X, Apple's most important product, was not written by Apple. Neither was the iPod's OS. Nor was iTunes. Or Final Cut Pro, Shake, Logic, or WebObjects. (Going back further, they didn't write Emailer either.) Apple bought all of those from third parties after they had been written.

Mac OS X's BSD subsystem of course wasn't written at Apple or at NeXT, and Safari's HTML engine wasn't written at Apple either.

And of course, they didn't invent the mouse or the GUI, though they were the first to make those things usable.

As far as hardware goes, Apple popularized USB but didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure they didn't invent 802.11b, which they also popularized.

So I wouldn't be surprised if Apple bought any company so that they could use the company's hardware or software.

But Steve Jobs did say that he wasn't interested in PDAs, so I would be surprised if Apple bought PalmOne or PalmTwo.

My bet is on Disney buying them.

Fair enough; I stand well-corrected. Nicely done, EH. But the point still stands as valid - Apple has expressed zero desire to enter the PDA market again. They have bad memories of the Newton and think it'll never work for them.

I mixed myself up.. I wanted to mean, "When was the last time they licensed a technology," but this didn't apply because we are discussing who could buy either Palm company. My fault.

But honestly, when was the last time they licensed a technology and paid royalties for it?

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + T616

>>>Mac OS X, Apple's most important product, was not written by Apple. Neither was the iPod's OS. Nor was iTunes. Or Final Cut Pro, Shake, Logic, or WebObjects. (Going back further, they didn't write Emailer either.) Apple bought all of those from third parties after they had been written.

Isn't OS X simply based on NeXT OS? If so, that hardly counts as an acquisition (unless the other way around: NeXT actually bought *Apple*). I knew about the iPod OS, but not the others. Those are very surprising to me (but I've been out of the Mac loop for a long time).

"Apple has expressed zero desire to enter the PDA market again. They have bad memories of the Newton and think it'll never work for them."

Steve Jobs said that they don't want to enter the PDA market because they don't see it going anywhere. They see smart phones as replacing PDAs, and Steve (wrongly, IMHO) said that there are enough phone companies. I really wish Apple would release a smart phone, but I don't see any reason why they'd have to use Palm OS to do it.

"But honestly, when was the last time they licensed a technology and paid royalties for it?"

I assume they have to pay something for USB and 802.11. They co-invented FireWire, so I imagine they don't have to pay for that. But those are pretty small things and I assume you are talking about bigger things like operating systems.

Apple licensed BSD and KHTML, but since those are free, they didn't have to pay any money. But they still license them in that Apple doesn't gain an advantage by being the only company that can use them.

(Interestingly and a little bit relatedly, IIRC Apple bought Toshiba's entire supply of 1.8" HDs for the iPod, which is why it took so long for iPod competitors to arrive.)

-POS lost majority marketshare this year, falling below 45% and keep dwindling.

-OS 6.0 is slightly late and it's a dog. It's crash happy, slow, and has massive incompatibilities. POS gets the bad rap for releasing unpolished product. OS 6.0, just like OS 5.0, again fails to reverse Palm loosing trend.

-PPC rules everything above $199. Palm belows it. It will only change slightly after Palm releases a second OS6.0 model that fix the glitch in the later part of the year. (similar to T|T -> T|T3 in 2003)

-unlike 2003 where the action are in low end models, 2004 will see actions in all price range. Vendor will experiments will far wider form factor, design and features.

-Palm fumbles with BT/WiFi yet again, specially with applications.

-Palm is out from any high end models until late next year when Sony returns with a high end snazzy model with video/TV and new screen. Majority of Palm's sale will be T|E, Zire, and some new low end model.

-2004 is the year of screen and wireless.

-MS finally gain meaningfull marketshare in phone market. Treo 600 dies a sad and pathetic death by summer. cheap treo shows up, PPC PE finally gains market, MS smartphones continues runaway sell closing in to Symbian. Dell dips their toe on wireless handheld with a GoodTech. clone.

-First mass market ultra expensive communicator costing $1200 shows up for Christmas 2004, heralding the new dawn of wireless handheld golden age. It runs either UIQ or PPCPE.

-Sony PSP shows up, tough battle at first but scares the hell out of any handheld maker in the market. Zodiac dies. PPC becomes a legit gaming platform when directX for handheld is released

-Toward the end of the year there will be handhelds with TV reciever, GPS reciver, and multi MP digicam. Also: Intel Bulverde, 128MB+, dual wireless, USB2go

You forgot to put "PPC r0x0rz" at the end of your post. Why can't you just go back to your poorly-written MSMobiles website and stop trying to convince yourself you're not an illiterate prick. And stop acting like you know what's going to happen. PPC2k3 did absolutely nothing. Oh look, now we've got 'Wizards' in our PPC. Fan-freaking-tastic. They don't work properly on the desktop, so why in God's name would I want them on my handheld? Listen up, moron. You better pray PPC2k4 will live up to the hype you're projecting or Windows Mobile will turn out like the bastard child of Bill Gates. Smartphone will not take off, Tablet PCs are laughable, and PPC, even if it captures all of the handheld market, is way too insignificant to keep the entire Windows Mobile platform alive. Keep talking about Palm dying, but know that once Palm dies, Microsoft won't do squat after that. You already had a lengthy list of improvements to PPC2k3, and imagine how much more lengthy it'll be in five years when you're stuck with the same thing (think MSIE6).

T-minus three years until Windows Mobile becomes totally neglected by Microsoft. There's a good prediction.

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + T616

chill Bosco. have some more egg nog.
just because my predictions have higher chance of being right than your blurb is no reason to get all pissy on me. (did you say Sony will be #1? hah.)

and yes 2k4 will live up to its hype, while OS 6.0...ehrrr. crash ...bomb... flop...kaboom...a thud.

PS. msmobile? eh?