Comments on: Sony Takes 10% of U.S. Retail Market

Ha! Ed's afraid to post anything regarding PocketPC. He doesn't want his readers to know PocketPC is kicking the Palm platform's ass! The PalmGuru seems to know what's happening though.

i agree. all discussions here are really 'Palm OS' focused and that has made this site really popular. putting pocketpc stuff here will be a disaster.

thanks ed. keep it up.

No I don't mean Ed should post PocketPC news here, but he should post the market share figures for those devices just as he did for HS, Palm, and SONY. Making comments like..."The remaining market share went to PocketPC" isn't very informative. What exactly was the "remaining share". It must be considerable for Ed to gloss over the issue like he did.

You can read the journal. The point is that despite the journalistic hype PocketPC has not gained much share. In fact depending on the time period they have lost share. PocketPC devices are fine on the high-end but they have no chance in the middle and the low-end which will be the biggest markets as always. The journal sales estimated 16% (unit) share for PPC. If you look at IDC and Gartner, they have predicted the demise of Palm for years. They are still in different markets.

I think the translation would be more like "I came here to read news on palm pda's, so thats what I want to see, If I wanted news on pocket pc's, I'd go to sites that offer news on them"

Hey, I just want the whole truth, and nothing more. I'm not interested in EDited marketshare data. :-)

I tend to agree that spending more than $300 on a PalmOS device is rather stupid when you consider that the more expensive models have no more features than the low-end models. Do you consider that enlightenment?

> But if you're spending $300 for any Palm PDA, your ignorance will not serve you any good.

What an ignorant thing to write... Sure, some high-end Palms are over-priced, but not all. The Clie N610C is a damn good buy. For $320 (street price), you get:

- 320x320, 16-bit screen
- bright backlighting... image is excellent under all lighting conditions
- expansion slot
- small and lightweight (5.6 oz)
- excellent battery life
- form factor that makes one-handed operation comfortable
- thoughtful details like a cradle power supply that can be used as portable charger and a well designed cover

> Ha! Ed's afraid to post anything regarding PocketPC. He doesn't want his readers to know PocketPC is kicking the Palm platform's ass!

That's FUD. PocketPC is doing well (finally), but Palm is still outselling it. It doesn't really matter... both platforms have strengths and weaknesses. Figure out your needs and choose accordingly. Immature, whiny, exaggeratory posts like yours are useless (whether they come from CE zealots or Palm fanatics).

Perhaps he means Net price.

At any rate, I think this entire Palm vs PPC debate is being driven by a slice of current Palm owners who have been waiting to upgrade and are undecided about what their next step will be: Palm again or a leap (of faith?) to PPC?

My Palm is half-dead. About two weeks ago, it took a plunge out of my shirt pocket -- unlike past times, this time the screen cracked. It is now equivalent to a Casio Pocket Viewer. I can read what's in it, but I can't add to it. And the screen is so badly cracked, only parts of it work.

Obviously, I need a new machine. Will I go with a CLIE? Or how about the Toshiba GENIO? Or maybe that new HP 56x? None of these choices existed at the start of this year. We Palm owners could ignore the iPaqers, just based on size arguments alone.

But now there's a PPC that is no larger than a Palm III. And now there's also a Palm (CLIE) that is smaller than a Palm III (yes, I know the Vs were around -- but I loathed those). Great color screens. Very appealing form factors. Both (GENIO and CLIE) more powerful than past Palm devices.

I think many other people are struggling with a similar decision. Hence the heightened debate recently.

Congratulations! ppcinfocenter.com is available.

http://www.networksolutions.com/

It's all yours, Ed!

GG

GG

> $320 street price? Quit pulling numbers out of your ass.

That's what I paid at dell.com (it was on sale).

> Perhaps he means Net price.

I use the terms interchangeably (most people I know consider street price and net price to be the same). However, to be more specific, I paid $320 "net price".

On a related topic, I went to dinner Saturday night with a large group of people (mostly programmers) who were friends of a friend (so I only knew a few of them).

I pulled my Clie N610C out of my pocket to write down a phone number and they were all mucho impressed. As it turns out, some of them owned IPAQs (purchased by their companies), but none of them had their IPAQ with them because they said they're too bulky to carry around. They loved holding the Clie and said it was significantly smaller then the IPAQ (even without the exapnsion sleeve).

I've used the IPAQ too and don't think it's *that much* larger than the Clie, but for some people it's bigger enough to make the difference between carrying it in your pocket or leaving it at home (obviously, other people don't mind carrying a larger unit).

So, dimensions and weight don't tell the whole story... despite being only 1/2 oz lighter, the Clie's shape is much more ergonomic than the IPAQ and the Clie fits in a pocket a lot more comfortably.

Anyway, like I wrote, both platforms have advantages and disadvantages... figure out your needs and choose what's appropriate. Enough of this silly holy war.

Umm thats worldwide not US which this is

I paid $265 including tax for a Kyocera Qcp 6035 at at OfficeMax.. plus I got a $100 mail in rebate.

Sony indeed may have great hardware, but until they get off their butts and give some customer service, I wouldn't have another one!!!
I bought the N710C...........not OS 4.0. Within a couple of weeks, they come out with the 610 WITH OS 4.0 and no update for the previous suckers who purchased the 710
NOW, they are coming out with a new 7x0 model and leaving the N710C customers behind. THANKS A LOT, SONY. NEVER AGAIN will I purchase another SONY product of any kind.

Say you buy from Palm or Handspring, after one month, they cut the price by $100. Can you ask them for the $100 back?

I bought a Visor before Handspring gave a rebate. It was after the refund period.........

Were those above posts actually posted 9/7?? Are you guys reading what news? Palm will give you OS4 upgrade to you so will Sony. Open your eyes, please.

http://www.palm.com/software/palmos4.html

Let's not forget Handera. I own one of the three that they actually sold.

I also have a Handera and frankly don't care where it stands in these statistics.

It's all relative to your needs and wants.

Porsche doesn't sell as many 911 Carara's as Chevy does Cavaleirs. But we all know which one is the superior machine.

They also don't advertise to the masses since they focus is on a very elite (well ok rich) group of people.

Handera is a wise company that focus their efforts where they will do the most good, but I think if they did decide to market their device like the other companies do, they would have quite a respectible chunk of these figures.

Am I a trouble maker or what ;)

Some anonymous troll writes

Porsche doesn't sell as many 911 Carara's as Chevy does Cavaleirs. But we all know which one is the superior machine.

Superior in what sense? The Posche costs eight times as much to buy as the Cavalier, and probably at least half again as much to own. If it doesn't last at least eight times as long, and if cost of ownership is your main metric, then which one is "the superior machine"?

What is it with the stronly Anti-Sony? Let me repeat, Palm's been in the market a long time (some would say they started it), Handsprings been in a few years (headed by the former people), Sony just jumped in. In any market it takes time to build a name for yourself. Give it time, Let's look in a year or two, when the brand has time to build, how well they compete...

(1) According to the article, M505 accounds for %15 of the 50%, that is 7.5% which is the 2.5% less than Sony's market share.

(2) The article said the number was "in the recent weeks". It didn't say anything about is the market share the cumulative one or the units sold in one particular period? m505 has been out longer than N710C, so if the market share is the cumulative one, then you can divide the share by the time and you will find m505 sold much less than N710C per month in average.

(3) N710C is reallly hard to get, just go to retail store to see if you can get one!

The is american sales, not worldwide. Could all the Clie users come up with one excuse for poor sales? It gets old to hear 101 reasons why the Clie doesn't have more share, when all they could talk about was the "massive sales" over the past 3 months.

I believe they mean the M500 and M505 when they say M500 series, just incase any body was confused

I'm the moderator of the m505 user group on Yahoo Groups and I have over 2300 members in my group. We're all sick of you Sony people constantly saying how bad the m505 is. You're all just JEALOUS!!!

Why don't you all just stop the m505 bashing and get on with your lives?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/m505

www.davyfields.com

Davy,

Are you the same person that wrote:

"The chief competitor for the Clie 320, is in fact, the m125. Already, even with the head-start, even the most glazed Clie owners can admit that the m125 will heavily outsell the Clie 320. Most people have bad memory's of the first Clie, the new one just a new second digit. Although Clie products may innovate, they will not-outsell, at least not for the forseable future."

Pardon me, but that sounds like some product bashing to me. Where are these "glazed Clie owners?" Have you met with them? Did they sign a declaration stating: "We, the glazed Clie owners, have been given expressed permission from the moderator of the m505 user group in the Yahoo Groups with over 2300 members that we can now admit that the m125 will heavily outsell the Clie S320?"

I've visited your Users Group and it is clear that you bash the Clie every chance you get. Considering that you're the moderator, this is quite frequent.

When asking for peace in the Clie/Palm debate, don't let hypocrisy (and a clear and hyperbolized bias) stand in your way.

It's alright to be enthusiastic about a device, but be sure to allow others the same amount of enthusiasm. I'm sure that if we all had the time, we'd all moderate our own Users Group, but the simple fact of the matter is that most of the readers on this site actually have to pay rent, utilities, and other sorts of payments in life. All of which means that we have jobs that require us to be away from the things like moderating a Users Group, going on vacations to Australia, going to rich prep schools, etc.

It has come to my attention that the posts under the name "davyfields" and "davy" are most likely impostors. It seems Ed has already deleted those posts -- along with some replies. Please don't fall for the troll bait! I loathe impostors! (See, yet another reason to properly register with PIC!)

umm 4.0 is faster and has 16bit color?

I am not anti-PPC, but I find difficult to see how cool PPC2002 is... What is so good about it, seriously? WinXP like "Home"? I can't even compare it with Silverscreen.

Once genio and J-560 hits the market m505 won't be able to compete, since they are both similarly priced to m505 but has far superior hardware/OS features.

Palm should come up with better machine before chrismast or they will only have market share less than 20% by the end of the year.

and PalmOS has better software. WHat's the point of all that fancy hardware if you can't run Wordsmith on it? I don't think you're running an Alpha workstation because it is too expensive and doesn't run the apps you need...

Why do I want to be able to open a spreadsheet in the Hebrew alphabet? That's completely useless to me and 99.9% of other PDA owners. Having that (or any other) functionality in there for people who don't need it is a waste of memory and processing power. I don't need to be able to do word processing on a PDA. I'll do that on my laptop or desktop thank you very much and use my PDA for simple reviewing and minor edits. Microsoft's arguments are still the same: we have more features and higher hardware requirements than you really need, and you pay extra for it. Wake me up when Microsoft has something I can use instead of telling me what I need and making it harder to do.

http://articles.pocketnow.com/content.cgi?db=articles&id=43

-- I might as well jump in too. New HP and GENIO pics.

Just as a side note, IDG (who published this article) is also the publisher of PC World.

The point is that there appears to be a slight bias, and that the company leans more towards the Microsoft side. The article is a Palm VS PPC writing, and starts off with an incorrect statement. The rest of the article is pretty informative, and I have no contention with that. In marketing, the flash and appearance of the presentations are important factors, and this event highlights that factor. The more attractive PPC screen, combined with it's better (for now) multimedia, make it a best bet for this type of event. Small, slick, and reliable are not exactly attention getters. There are other reasons why the PPC platform was heavily utilized this year, and your comments are thought provoking. One of the things helping the flip-flop in demos is that the PPC market is relatively new, and developers do not have to deal with as much product saturation. PPC has two major applications which are outside the normal PIM range, but those are not as good as their existing Palm counterparts, so there is room for a lot of new products. The Palm OS software base is pretty well covered (we'll ignore the really stupid programs!), and the major applications are difficult to compete with for a startup company. There are a few examples of new Palm OS apps that rattle the cage by taking an existing type of application, and break out of the mold in capability and performance (WordSmith and Ababall come to mind). But, it's hard to shake things up when the jar is so full. Of course we COULD get rid of things like the "Handy Belch Monitor" and go after those areas that REALLY need attention, like a full fledged email application that handles attachments without a desktop PC. I'd love to chat more, but it's getting late. Take care...

> sharp color screen a flashy marketing trick?

Don't know where your got that, it wasn't from me. I stated the PPC screens were better.

> let's skip the multimedia.

Does that mean I have to delete my music videos? :-(

> viewing 100Mb of corporate database file.

I'd like to see that. Really. The HP Jordana 568, one of the first to run PocketPC 2002 and the one with the most memory, can't. Neither can the 558's in my department, neither can my boss' Casio. At least the new models seem to do away with having to drag around an extension cord.

> how pathetic it is mentioning wordsmith

Is there another wordprocessor for PPC other than Pocket Word? Must be, because I know you can't be referring to the Pocket Word that I know. It must be a new version.

> If you survey the Palm software titles, they are limited to simple text, list and calculator like program

You are forgetting that, according to PocketPC Magazine, the most requested apps for the PPC platform were Word and Excel type applications. Unfortunately they both fall short of their Palm counterparts. This is based on real world usage, on real handhelds of both types, used by real IT professionals in an environment with 15,000 employees. Ironically, our Microsoft-only management just purchased Palm OS devices for our Field Engineers.

> not even the smallest/sleekest anymore

Opinions are not as accurate as tape measures. I like the Clie personally and have sold customers on them when visiting stores, but they are longer, thicker, and heavier.

> reliability? two words: SD mems.

Not sure if you mean SD mem is the answer to PPC reliability, or if you mean that SD mem on the Palm is not reliable. I've had no trouble with SD.

It would be pointless to go on, as you have the device of your preference and that's fine with me, I would not tell you to drop your platform because of my opinion, and I hope the same would be true for you. I could not care less about that "zen" thing, and I have the device I have because it's very good at what I need it to do. A PPC would have been cheaper, and I am intimately familiar with Windows. But I spent the extra cash because the Palm was better suited for my work load. I do disagree with mis-representation, and that was my only contention to begin with.

Yeah, I'm having a difficult time seeing how being the "flavor of the week" at Demomobile translates into "Microsoft's dominance of the handheld market".

Particularly since, for example, Handspring (all on their lonesomes) have a higher percentage of the handheld market than all the PPC manufactures put together.

Why don't you PocketPC TROLLS just stop posting here. PALM controls 80% of the PDA market share. Microsoft barely shows up on the screen.

The iPAQ is nothing but an overpriced TOY and the new PocketPC models are doomed to fail just like everything else Microsoft has put out

..and that would mean? $30 m1xxs?

Hmmm!

Microsoft is planning to release speech recognition power toy along with '2002'

It's free.