ACCESS Acquires Networking Company

I was thinking Palms talking to your stove at first too, but remember, Cobalt was about breaking out of the PDA mindset. PalmSource stated at the time that Cobalt could run on a device with no screen, or a device with full SVGA. Smart devices are on the horizon (a matter of time/money) when they come full force, what OS will they run? Better put, if you are a manufacturer of devices and you put out a resume for someone to code your interface, where are you going to look? WinCE is the first option visible (due to sheer marketing) WindRiver, or some linux varient, but then you have to rool your own GUI... Course if ALP is around, free development tools and a ton of developers used to the OS, that's a pretty good place to be. On top of that if you want to see to China/Japan/Korea and need support of the character set... (seeing as to you prolly an asian nation *doing* the manufacturing)

This fits like a glove with the way PalmSource was going before all this. The bonus will be being able to use my Palm as the God-Box to my house (something I do anyway :)

While we're at it, I'd LOVE to see someone in the hardware biz (*COUGH, SONY or Panasonic, COUGH*) make a line of "smart" home entertainment (a couple of TVs, a suround sound receiver, DVD player or burner, a game console etc) devices that can all talk to each other via a simple/cheap interface (USB, ethernet, Rs232 etc). Yes, it's been tried before (S-Link, AnyNet, CompuLink, Dimensia etc but there were all inherently dumb devices).

Then have a programmable remote running ALP (imagine the LifeDrive formfactor with softer rubberized contours and a larger screen) and a smattering of hard buttons. You could download little PQAs or applets (for lack of a better term) for new device functionality (Playstation 3 or Location-Free functionality, for example). That'd be a great way for a company to be a licensee of Access without competing against the "other" licensees or Palm themselves.

This tech + Access/PalmSource's prior relationship with Sony & their diverse lineup of CE hardware would be a natural fit. Plus, it'd give Sony a leg up on the Chinese flat panel & DVD player manufacturers whom Sony cannot hope to compete with on price alone.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

That would be cool. I'd love to be able to instruct my DVR to dump certain shows to my DVD recorder without my having to sit there and manually play them back.

> "...Then have a programmable remote running ALP..."

Duh! Why only run ALP on the remote?

*All* the smart devices should run ALP, right? :)

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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

Well... According to Access, the NetFront browser recently surpassed 235 million deployments globally, on over 801 unique devices. That's a lot of licenses.

-Ryan

All of this makes me wonder what business they are in. Or more precisely, what business they think they are in.
why don't you get a functional ALP out first? Hmmm?

Hey here's idea, why don't they ship a functional APL system then worry about other businesses.

Unless they are hedging their bets.

You might want to find out what business Access is already in before you suggest that they're hedging their bets. IP Infusion is a better match to Access' existing business than PSRC was, and merely complements the strategy they outlined.

May You Live in Interesting Times

PP,

You are right, of course, but my comment was really one of focus. being a jack of all trades and master of none is not a recipe for success.

It is a recipe for divesture though...

> "...why don't you get a functional ALP out first?..."

Competitive Strategy 101...

What is harder and more important to your strategy:

(1) Developing a mobile linux distro for your browser, with your own special pretty launcher, and palmOS compatability

or

(2) Building trusted relationships with many of the most important technology firms in the world, Samsung (all new Samsung phones use NetFront), Sony (NetFront is in every PSP), Sony Ericson (ditto), NTT DoCoMo (obviously), semiconductor firms, home entertainment firms, etc, etc, etc.

:)

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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

you're right, I just took the home portion out of the title.

Further, IP Infusion develops a home media-center server that can serve as a broadband gateway, and stream to your handset or in-car media system using secure protocols.

In the press release, ACCESS notes that the IP Infusion home-media server is much cheaper than comparable PC-based media servers.

Wow! ACCESS is not just going to thrash Microsuck in browsers and mobile tech: ACCESS is going to go head-to-head with Vista media center. :)

And I bet it will run ALP. :)

Sweet. :)

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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

I think it's the other way round. ALP is a distraction from Access' main direction, but IP Infusion fits that plan like a glove. ;)

May You Live in Interesting Times

Or microwaves ovens runing PalmOS?! :-D

Handspring Visor -> m505 -> Zire71 -> Zire72 -> Treo650

Penguinpowered wrote:

I think it's the other way round. ALP is a distraction from Access' main direction, but IP Infusion fits that plan like a glove. ;)

Holy cow you are right! I can't beleive that I didn't see that before. I wonder what their P & L is on a divsional level to support thier core strategy and Palmsource. Time to hit Lexus/Nexus...