Comments on: What Happened to Acer's Palm OS License?

Back in early 2001, Acer became a licensee of the Palm OS. The company was one of the first licensees that was going to target the Chinese PDA market. They released 3 Palm Powered PDAs, then seemed to completely vanish from the Palm OS scene...

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If you don't live there...

Palm Cow @ 4/21/2004 6:32:55 PM #

2nd!!!

If you don't live in an appartment, sell it off---don't NOT pay the rent!

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

RE: If you don't live there...

dustbunny44 @ 4/21/2004 7:11:11 PM #

Suspicion:
Did someone pay them to move?

Sad but inevitable

JarJar @ 4/21/2004 8:57:32 PM #

Regardless of who is at "fault" in the Palm-Acer lawsuits, this isn't great news for the Palm economy. It is inevitable because the overall Palm market isn't large enough to support as many companies as it does. The pie just isn't big enough.

RE: Sad but inevitable

RhinoSteve @ 4/22/2004 12:22:23 AM #

Frankly, I view this as a sign of maturity. As far as I know, this is the first legal test of PalmSource's OS license agreement. Frankly, I bet a more detailed agreement and verbose OS license agreement will some about from this. I for one is going to look at court dialog on this one.

RE: Sad but inevitable

tfftruoa @ 4/22/2004 1:50:23 AM #

This says nothing about the maturity of the OS. THis is a business matter, not a technical accomplishment of Palm OS. Getting sued over liscensing issues shows that a company didn't have good enough lawyers drawing up its contracts or that they didn't know how to properly liscense their OS. It basically says that PalmSource isn't very well administered.

The Federation for the Responsible Use of Acronyms

RE: Sad but inevitable

tfftruoa @ 4/22/2004 1:53:45 AM #

Erg. Responded to the second comment only when I meant to mostly respond to the first.

There are not enough big palm os liscensees. PalmOne and Sony are the only ones with any market share. PalmOne has a huge market share advantage over Sony, but Sony has far deeper pockets to invest in developement that will benifit the platform as a whole. PPC has Toshiba, HP, and Dell leading. HP is massive and Dell is still raking in profits despite a generally struggling tech sector (I'm unsure as to the state of Toshiba, but if memory serves, they are signifigantly bigger than PalmOne). Add in microsoft, and PPC has piles of money to through at developement.

Acer isn't the biggest corporation, but their specialization in Chinese PDA's gave them the oppertunity to acclimate a potentially huge PDA market to Palm OS, and that is a good thing.

Palm OS needs more big liscensees. Someone with deep pockets and a good r&d department. IBM would be very nice, but not likely. They're too invested in Linux to support some other OS for handhelds. Hitachi would also be good (put a microdrive in their models), but I digress.

The Federation for the Responsible Use of Acronyms

RE: Sad but inevitable

ocspub @ 4/22/2004 12:57:27 PM #

> Acer isn't the biggest corporation,

It isn't THE biggest corporation in the world, but it certainly isn't a tiny Taiwanese garage company either. Check out their stats on the web. Overalll they are certainly significantly bigger than PalmOne.

Oliver

RE: Sad but inevitable

gfunkmagic @ 4/22/2004 7:14:44 PM #

>>>>Palm OS needs more big liscensees. Someone with >>>>deep pockets and a good r&d department. IBM would >>>be very nice, but not likely...

Blaaa... They don't need another pda OEM...THEY NEED ANOTHER BIG TIME MOBILE PHONE LISENCEE!!! M$ made a coupe last year by getting Motorola as a lisencee and that will help them tremendously. PalmSource has done a good job recruiting Chinese lisencees like GSL, Lenovo etc, but they still need to grab a big fish like Sony Ericsson, Sanyo etc. The former may be a possibility with the increasing ownership of Nokia in the Symbian consortium which might encourage other partners to boraden their horizons....

Anyway, as the EMEA story below illustrates, the market share went to Nokia, a mobile OEM. PalmSource should and is focusing it's lisencing attention there, not the stagnent PDA segment...

I support http://Tapland.com/

--------------------
GNM

What if they lose?

rory @ 4/22/2004 5:50:03 AM #

If PalmSource lost and had to cough up $4.9M that might have quite grave ramifications for them as they are not currently profitable...

--
Visor Deluxe > iPod > Clie SJ33 > Zire 71 > Newton MessagePad 2000 (with WiFi)

May I make a wild conjecture?

mikemusick @ 4/22/2004 12:18:35 PM #

It would not surprise me at all to learn that Acer was fudging the "units produced" accounting, seriously short-changing Palm on royalties. There are numerous reports that Chinese manufacturers have become increasingly dismissive about software, trademark and trade dress agreements. Why should anybody be surprised? International civil law has no teeth to speak of, and the Chinese government is more than a little lax vis-a-vis intellectual property enforcement.

I'll further conjecture Acer's countersuit is nothing more than posturing. If any of us had half a chance of successfully suing for "poor support", Bill G. would be living in a double-wide.

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

ocspub @ 4/22/2004 12:52:58 PM #

> There are numerous reports that Chinese
> manufacturers have become increasingly dismissive
> about software, trademark and trade dress agreements.
> Why should anybody be surprised? International civil
> law has no teeth to speak of, and the Chinese
> government is more than a little lax vis-a-vis
> intellectual property enforcement.

I assume by "Chinese" you mean the People's Republic of China. If you do a tiny bit of research, you'll find that Acer is actually a Taiwanese company. While the PRC claims Taiwan to be part of greater China, last I checked the Beijing government didn't actually have much control over the intellectual property enforcement in Taiwan. And I have not really seen anyone accuse large Taiwanese corporations of not taking copyight laws seriously...

Oliver

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

neuron @ 4/22/2004 1:02:25 PM #

I think Mike jumped his conclusion too early. Until the case is end, nobody know what has happened. But one thing is important here, legend(the biggest computer manufacturer) has become a Palm OS licencee in 2003, PalmSource may treat Legend and Acer different in their licence policy, considering Legend is too important for PalmSource Asia market. IF it's proven to be true, PalmSource may lost this case.

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

mikemusick @ 4/22/2004 1:37:35 PM #

>jumped... too early

My bad. For some strange reason it was firmly entrenched in my mind that Acer was PRC-based. Taiwan is extremely cooperative with U.S. and international IP law.

Palm and/or Acer may well have a problem, but these little spitting contests usually don't do anybody any good ('cept maybe the lawyers), so it's in their interest to make nice. Let's wish both sides the best resolution.

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

ocspub @ 4/22/2004 2:30:15 PM #

> Palm and/or Acer may well have a problem, but
> these little spitting contests usually don't
> do anybody any good ('cept maybe the lawyers), so
> it's in their interest to make nice. Let's wish
> both sides the best resolution.

For what it's worth, PalmSource no longer lists Acer among its licensees:

http://www.palmsource.com/licensees/

Oliver

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

gfunkmagic @ 4/22/2004 7:20:50 PM #

They haven't been listed for months now afaik... I've pointing that out for a while now. At leaset now we have a reason why...

I support http://Tapland.com/

--------------------
GNM

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

RhinoSteve @ 4/23/2004 12:51:53 PM #

Mike,

You are not far from the truth.

Acer is not the most ethical company as far as paying their royalites. When they started off on the PC business, that theater was going so gonzo, Microsoft freely admits that the pre-Windows 95 royality collections was at 50% if that over all PCs sold. Acer was a handful of overseas PC makers that shipped "below the radar" not giving much back to the OS provider.

It is my opinion of Acer is that the "the OS is free" mindset crept into their PDA division. PalmSource has very good third party verification of manufacturing quantities, Acer wasn't willing to fess up to their real numbers and refuses to pay the piper.

Anyone can make money in a boom time. But only the really smart and ethical ones make it in a crunch like now.

RE: wild conjecture?

twrock @ 4/24/2004 9:51:37 PM #

"Taiwan is extremely cooperative with U.S. and international IP law."

I live in Taiwan, and I find your statement quite humorous. "Taiwan," "extremely cooperative?" Only if one is gullible enough to believe everything they are told. People can be very polite and "cooperative" as they lie to your face and go off and do something else entirely.

"It would not surprise me at all to learn that Acer was fudging the "units produced" accounting, seriously short-changing Palm on royalties."

Personally I am much more inclined to agree your original statement (sentence).

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

rushpda @ 4/25/2004 10:50:03 PM #

As far as I can remember, Palm dared to lie on the basic fact that how many colors its own product M130 can display. At first, Palm claimed M130 can display 16-bit color, then admited it can only support 12-bit color.

Sounds unreal? Can you expect PalmOne is an honest company? I don't think so.

RE: PRC vs. Taiwan, and Intellectual Property Rights

mikemusick @ 4/26/2004 1:08:44 PM #

FWIW...

I talked to my patents/copyrights attorney this morning, and mentioned our discussion here. She said that Taiwan is a stickler about patent/copyright protection, and is one of the few countries (the U.S. is not one!) that criminalizes violations. She went on to say that Taiwan is unusually sensitive about this due to longstanding ties with Western technology companies; they don't want to betray the trust and the massive amount of business that comes with it.

PRC, on the other hand, is a minefield. They thumb their noses at U.S. businesses because they know we're there for price only, and that the largest growth market is themselves.

So back to the original issue... Acer may well have started all of this by fudging the numbers and getting caught in market audits, but without being on the inside we'll never know.

RE: May I make a wild conjecture?

twrock @ 4/27/2004 9:24:42 AM #

"Taiwan is a stickler about patent/copyright protection, ...."

And I find this statement humorous as well.

Has the person who is making this statement visited Taiwan recently and seen just how easily and at how many locations in any city around this island one can purchase pirated software and media? It is rampant!

The "law" and the "enforcement of law" are two entirely different things. Practically speaking, without enforcement, there is no law. (Which, by the way, makes for interesting traffic conditions as well.)

Consider this: might it be economically advantageous to be perceived by others as complying with international copyright laws? Might that possibly have some effect on the statistical information you deliver to your economic partners concerning your enforcement of those laws?

Now, I can agree that unless one is "inside," it is impossible to know at this point what happened in the Acer/PalmSource dispute. But again, I would not be at all surprised to hear in the end that Acer was not complete "up-front" in this whole affair. Concerning whether or not PalmSource was, I have no opinion.

The Real Story

LiveFaith @ 4/22/2004 5:02:44 PM #

Rumor ...
Acer insiders say that PSRC promised them a clipboard limit > 4kb, but PSRC said current technology was not at the point for such a feat. ???

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: The Real Story

Lucky Bob @ 4/23/2004 5:02:57 PM #

Welcome to the new millenium. :)

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

RE: The Real Story

RhinoSteve @ 4/25/2004 10:06:33 PM #

Let's see, this is a modern update of an old joke.

Palm OS: Kills one bird with one stone that others customize with the right license.

Pocket PC: Tries to kill several birds with one very heavy and burdensome stone.

Windows XP: Kills many birds with one big non-standard stone.

Linux: Kills many birds with a uniquely shaped stone for each bird.

SCO Unix: Sues many people that sells stones used to kill birds that they claim comes from their stream.

Mac OS: Kills both very rich and very poor birds with the same pretty looking stone.

Symbian: Kills one bird with one stone that nobody else wants to use.

Newton OS: The stone arrived five years before the bird showed up so you were throwing at nothing.

Xerox Parc: Found a stone. Didn't know what to do with it. Now sues others that throw stones at birds to get a royality for first finding stones.

GO / Momenta / Slate / Penware: The bird is fossilized in the stone.

IBM / DEC / Unisys: Throws bolders to kill an Archaeoptryx.