Comments on: IBM Selling Palm's Handhelds Again

For years, IBM sold handhelds that were basically Palm Inc. models except with an IBM logo and a black casing. In February, the company decided to stop this practice. However, IBM has just announced that it will begin selling the full line of Palm's handhelds. However, these won't be re-branded under the IBM name; they will be regular Palm handhelds. This is an important announcement for Palm as it is working very hard to increase its sales to companies, many of which buy from IBM.

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Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 1:19:28 PM #

I think that a lot of media commentators are going to be eating their words. Soon they'll have to stop pretending that the PPC market dominance is eminent - they've acted like this is a foregone conclusion for 2 years now, but the numbers have not met these expectations. Afterall, Sony recently blew past Compaq (the PPC leader) in U.S. sales. This deal can only mean a further boost not only to Palm, but the OS in general.

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 1:29:30 PM #

I agree
And i'm happy for Palm, Microsoft is being a little to greedy by trying to take away shares from Palm, but in the longrun i think Palm users benefited from that. (Palm OS 5)

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

Token User @ 7/23/2002 1:41:14 PM #

While I agree (because I am a PalmOS bigot), remember many years ago when IBM was nice and cosy with MS, and had a rebranded thing called PC DOS. That evolved into Windows, then NT, then came the split and OS/2 came out.

I am not sure if OS/2 is available anymore in any incarnation, but it kicked ass at the time, but ultimately failed to capture the desktop market.

IBM now do Linux, and Windows.

In a similar vein, they had the Palm, rebranded as a WorkPad, then dropped it and our now pushing Palm's again.

Expect no loyalty. If the market demands it, they will jump to the darkside and integrate closer with PPC (or Linux - the IBM Zaurus???). Its all about business and building relationships.

Token.

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 1:56:39 PM #

IBM could build a PPC device if the thought it was worth their while ($).

I suspect PPC makers are losing money on their devices, and MSFT is using the Desktop OS as a stick to get them to keep making the PPC devices.

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 5:17:18 PM #

Just a correction to an earlier comment:

OS/2 was out BEFORE the split. Microsoft sold MS OS/2 and IBM sold IBM OS/2 right up to version 1.3 - it was after that point that that the split began. Microsoft used to support OS/2 command line applications in Windows NT. Why? Because there were still MS OS/2 1.3 users out there that needed support for their home-grown apps. I don't want this to get too far off topic, but I felt it necessary to correct the comment above. (Oh, and I do actually work for one of those two companies, and did when the split came about, by the way, so I know what I'm talking about)

Cheers!

P.S. An updated version of OS/2 Warp is being sold as E-commstation currently.

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 5:46:59 PM #

I'm glad to see IBM siding with Palm OS once again. As some others have pointed out, don't confuse market demands with a good relationship. If you have read the US vs MS Findings of Fact (available from http://www.peanutpress.com/free.cgi) you will know that MS did its best to destroy the IBM PC market share with the release of Win 95 just to attempt to force IBM to stop selling OS/2. IBM hasn't been MS friend in a long while but that doesn't mean IBM can stop doing business with MS.

This is certainly good news for Palm's thrust into the corporate marketplace. Actually having some Palm OS devices on the market would help too but that should be soon in coming.

Once we have the PalmOS 5 devices the next hurdle will be how do PalmOS 5 apps stack up against the PPC .NET Compact Framework apps.

RE: Things are really looking up for Palm

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/23/2002 8:23:39 PM #

I had heard the story about the IBM/M$ fiasco was that M$ and IBM were jointly working on OS/2 (or was it Windows 95 or NT), then M$ suddenly jumped ship and broke off the relationship only to bring out WIndows 95 6 months before OS/2 came to market.

The reason OS/2 never really took off was that it was 6 months late in coming to the market, which by then Windows had had a "more or less" firm hold on the market.

Anyways, FWIW, a majority of ATM's still use OS/2 Warp as the base OS since hardly anyone uses OS/2 Warp anymore and its considered "more secure" from fraud from hackers and such because of the lack of knowledge of OS/2.

-PZ

The financial terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.

markgm @ 7/23/2002 4:35:15 PM #

From what I've read, no money will change hands. This should be a win for IBM (more as a service for their customers), and a giant win for Palm as a way to move more units.

Nice one Guys!

Crash Override @ 7/23/2002 5:20:49 PM #

Well now. IBM - there's a company that knows what they're about and since they're so close to our friends at Microsoft I think this speaks volumes about how good Palm handhelds are.

http://piersbell.tripod.com/

RE: Nice one Guys!

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/24/2002 2:05:17 AM #

The only reason we're so close to M$ is that old dictum "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" :-)

The IBM philosophy is to work with anyone if we can make money from it, but also to work with everyone. You could say we're agnostic when it comes to making money :-)

This is not an exclusive deal, don't be too surprised if we do the same with M$ and Blackberry, whatever it takes to get WebSphere to be the center of the corporate Webiverse.