Comments on: LG Electronics Licensees the Palm OS

Appreciate the similarity with Samsung phones but they are direct competitors in the same market. Never seen an LG rebranded under another brand. Could happen, but never seen it. Would cause too much confusion. If rebranding does happen it would be in a market where LG isn't selling directly.

I hope to see a 3G phone here on '3' or 'Vodafone' soon with Palm OS-Linux or Cobalt.

Mark

http://www.churchoflivingfaith.com/images/lg600i.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

It never fails to make me laugh.

Then don't worry about that big tip to my PayPal account. I'll let you view for free even if it is a mistake.

By the way, I would upgrade that FF browser to 1.004 from the beta version you must be using. ChurchofLivingFaith.com doesn't even crash Netscape 6.0.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Personally I believe LG will introduce a device sooner rather than later ("sooner" = compared to the two-year PalmLinux transition). I doubt they (Palm + LG) would announce something like that now, only to wait a couple of years until they have something to show for it.

Palm Vx (a classic) -> Palm 505 (*yawn*) -> Dell Axim (slooow...) -> Palm TE (great) -> Qtek 9090 (great idea, lousy platform) -> Nokia 6630 (a toy) -> iMate SP3i (not bad) -> Treo 650 (almost perfect)

PS, my faith is not strong enough to be believe the "accidental" clicks ... inquiring minds must wanna know. :-D

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Pat, I believe I've mentioned having problems before with Firefox on your website, but I went there again, and the fphover applet seems to wreak havoc. I had to close down Firefox and end task the process in Windows before I could use it again. You may want to look into it.

Back on topic, Let's see some LG tech wizardry!

_________________
Sean

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Yes, I am kidding. I actually miss all the scraps like this little distraction from the old days of anonymous posting here.

I liked Livefaith's site, have no problems with it using Mozilla, and still find his fotos fun. Sorry you don't.

Life goes on.

So, does anyone know anything about LG's lineup. I am following threads here, at Brighthand, and at BargainPDA about this move and have yet to see a good link to the models most likely to show up with Palm OS first. Anyone?

Yeah, what he said. We want an inquisition to slay all destractors and empty their PayPal accounts thru a donations page. That'll make em' all believe! :-o

... oooh, I guess I need to uninstall that FF browser now? :-(

... and by the way, I think this is an upcoming LG phone.
http://www.churchoflivingfaith.com/images/lg600i.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Its funny how you can find one person who is always rubbed the wrong way.

Surur

Have some respect, man!

Surur

Now that those two yappy puppies are through with their little pi$$ing match (both lost, by the way) perhaps the rest of us can continue with a more mature discussion. Next time both of them will get a swat on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper...

LG is a huge company and has several phones that could easily be adapted to become low to mid-range "Below Average to Average Intelligence"Phones™. Now that Handspring brilliantly hacked PalmOS 5 into a stable SmartPhone OS, most of the hard work has been done. Any decent-sized handset maker could put out an IQ100Phone™ (or even an IQ70Phone™ [featurephone]) within six months. If LG is smart, they will AIM LOW. A small, light, attractively-styled $100 - $200 PalmOS IQ100Phone would be able to tap a potentially HUGE market.

TVoR

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Do you do anything but post here on every single topic? It's ok to get yourself out of the house every now and then.

It's not clear from the announcement what the term of the license is, but unless they're just planning a one-off they're going to be looking for how they can transition smoothly going forward. Garnet would not be a smart choice--not for a phone handset manufacturer.

The other reason to guess they might be planning to go with Cobalt is that Cobalt is designed to scale down to small form factors that are more popular as handsets. Look at that Oswin Cobalt phone with the 240x320 display, for example. It looks more like a Nokia phone than a Treo and is likely to strike down in the broader mid-level market instead of just the high end.

People talk about how Cobalt is stillborn, but frankly I think the recent announcements are more of a sign that Garnet is entering its end of life cycle.

It's all speculation, but that's my guess.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com

Be afraid.

Be VERY afraid!

1. License OS 5.2 and do all of their "own" band-aid applying to it, hoping for better results than P1's had in the past year+.

2. Fool around with some Garnet AND Cobalt devices that never see the light of day (for the sake of getting their feet wet) and then either bail on their POS license (while paying dearly to exit the contract) OR waiting to see how PalmLinux fares. Remember, LG is flush with cash these days and can afford to sit around for a while until they figure out what to do with their license.

As I said earlier, they may buy PalmSource/P1/both, pare 'em down to the bare minimum, and go it alone. "Zenith" and "Palm" make for nice'n easy ways to the hearts & minds of American consumers (ie the path of least resistance)...Why? Well, there are still some that can recall the atrociously cheap VCRs Goldstar foistered onto the marketplace back in the '80's. It's easier to just buy up the rights to a defunct/dying brand name that's still recognizeable rather than fight tooth and nail to build up your brand (like it's taken ~20 years for Samsung to do).

WHAT if a newly hacked-up version of Garnet is in the works? Sorta like a Garnet/Cobalt hybrid. I don't mean the under-the-hood bits & pieces of Cobalt that have appeared in recent P1 devices. I mean an honest to goodness Garnet.5 type release. No multi-tasking etc, but with better security, wireless support, NVFS management, fonts etc. Kind of like how Win ME was to Win 98 (bugginess aside, hopefully) when M$ realized they couldn't get XP out in 2000.

I still maintain that LG will be there with a line of fully tested and solid Cobalt smartphones sometime in 2007. The Treo and whatever GSPDA cooks up with Cobalt will have to carry the torch until then.

A spanish tech magazine said LG was going to use Palm On Linux."

This is great news. It means that the phone won't be here until 2007 or so. But, this means further, that PalmSource still has 12 new manufacturers lined up for OS licenses for products that the will ship THIS YEAR. PalmSource promised. So, we hve all 12 coming in the next 6 months PLUS LG next year or two.

THIS WILL BE JUST GREAT!

2) There will be no further development of PalmOS 5 (Garnet) or PalmOS 6 (Cobalt) for at least another year [Read: No further development, period].

3) Palm will never bring out a PalmOS 6 device.

4) Palm will be using modified PalmOS 5 (presumably up to 5.99999999999) for at least 18 - 24 more months.

5) Palm is actively considering using OSes other than PalmOS for future devices.

6) Most planned PalmOS 6 devices have been cancelled. Only a couple proof of concept devices exist. None will be available for purchase any time soon. If ever.

7) It takes approximately a year to take a COMPLETED smartphone through all the testing procedures and into the hands of consumers.

8) MANY completed phones are never released simply because they are not picked up by carriers. (Hellooooooooooo Samsung SPH-i550, SGH-i530, SGH-i505!) Others (like the Motorola MPx) are dumped in the corporate trash can like a ba$tard, gimpy, redheaded stepchild or (like the frustrating-but-cool Sony Ericsson T608) are abandoned by carriers + left to fend for themselves. Bottom line: product announcements and even working prototypes mean NOTHING in the cellphone industry. Until you can actually buy a phone at your local cellphone shop it might just as well not exist.

9) Developers have shunned PalmOS 6 because there are no devices running PalmOS 6, they have to re-learn how to code if developing for it, and the development tools have been lacking.

10) PalmOS 6 reportedly has serious speed and stability "issues" in its current state. If development has now been stopped, presumably all bugs/"issues" will not be fixed any time soon should a licensee be brave enough to actually ship a device with PalmOS 6.

11) PalmSource has no new revenue streams (+ revenues continue to decline), is losing licencees, has continued to lose tens of millions $$$ per year, just fired 1/6 of its staff, has no permanent CEO, and is betting its entire future on OSes that will not be ready for at least another 12 - 18 months.

12) PalmSource sold it's rights to the "Palm" name and in a few years will have to stop calllling its product PalmOS.

13) The three most innovative companies in the PalmOS platform (HanEra, Handspring and Sony) are now gone.

CAN IT POSSIBLY GET ANY WORSE THAN THIS?

Is there ANYONE (besides Kirvin) who still feels that PalmSource can survive independently.

Predicted "Dead Pool" Takeout date? PalmSource will be purchased within six months.

TVoR, Inc.


------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

== http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050630/earns_palmsource.html?.v=5

It looks pretty all-encompassing to me.

PDABuzz probably is simply clueless - and me for assuming they knew something more significant.

Nevermind!

True that the NA smartphone market is currently larger than Asia, but the growth going forward will in in Asia. Seen the growth rate in China lately?

Two points. First, there are a lot more people in China than in the U.S., about 4-5X. So even a smaller percentage means a large number. Second, guess which country on this planet is one of the fastest-growing luxury car market? Yes, it is China, where the "average" person owns a bicycle. And If you go out and survey 100 business executives, more than 80% of them will tell you that China is a key growth market for his/her company.

"As for GSPDA, of course they're not LG. I wasn't comparing them. I was pointing out that smartphone sales in Asia aren't even close to those in the west."

LG sell in Europe and North America as well. They are tier 1 not because they only sell in Asia.

"In any event, LG has a lot of converged devices that never make it outside Korea, in case you didn't know. My primary question is whether they intend to market in the US and Europe, or to make devices exclusively for the Korean market. It seems like nobody knows the answer to that, and they're trying to obfuscate the fact."

The same applies to Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia. The fact is that we don't know for sure whether LG will market Palm OS smartphones worldwide or just in Korea. Only time will tell. However, if you read the press release closely, it says that LG licensed "Palm OS worldwide." So if I were to guess, I would say that these LG-Palm OS smartphones are coming to the U.S. and Europe.

LG sell in Europe and North America as well. They are tier 1 not because they only sell in Asia.

I think that you're deliberately avoiding my point. Of course they sell in EU and NA. But their converged devices haven't left Korea, which is their home market. International companies frequently make products for their home market that never leave the country--look at Sony.

The fact is that we don't know for sure whether LG will market Palm OS smartphones worldwide or just in Korea.

Correct, yes, that is the current situation. Thank you for acknowledging the original question.

So what? I was using the luxury car example to illustrate a point. If you can't infer from one situation to another, then we have problem.

"I think that you're deliberately avoiding my point. Of course they sell in EU and NA. But their converged devices haven't left Korea, which is their home market. International companies frequently make products for their home market that never leave the country--look at Sony."

Did I avoid your question? Please re-read the rest of my original reply and see you own reply below.

"Correct, yes, that is the current situation. Thank you for acknowledging the original question."

Here is the central issue. You are assuming status quo for the foreseeable future. Your logic goes like this - if a company has not sold outside of its home country, then it is unlikely it will sell outside its home country in the future. Please stop looking into the future through the rear-view mirror. Sony didn't sell outside of Japan 50 years ago, and look at how far it has come. LG is one the largest Korean Chaebols with gloabl ambition, and I highly doubt that it licensed the Palm OS, which is more popular in the U.S. than anywhere else, soley for its domestic market. Like I said before, only time will tell.

My current LG phone has taken a lot of abuse. I sometimes forget to close the pocket on my bike bag I chuck it in to commute home. As a result I've become attuned to the sound of it flying out of my bag and sliding across the pavement at high speed. I've done this about half a dozen times to it, plus all the other random dropping and abuse I've subjected it to.

The only LG phone I would have said wasn't good was the VX4400. It definitely felt like it was rushed to market and it broke easily and had some other weird issues.

I definitely agree about Samsung. I tried a couple of those and they both died within the 15 day guarantee period. Terrible.

Kyocera basically gave up years ago. I'm not sure they're even still a licensee in any real way--PalmSource lists them on its website, but it also lists Fossil, Lenovo, and Sony, who have all walked away from the market.

Then what else would people possibly ever need beyond that? :-D

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

>Fossil, Lenovo, and Sony, who have all walked away from the market.

AdamaDBrown wrote:

>"Selling," of course, being a relative term. I could stand out on the roadside "selling" $25 bags of rocks. But that doesn't mean anyone will buy them.

The point was that you indicated that Fossil "walked away from the market". This is not factual (but hey, look where we are so it is no big surprise). If Fossil can't sell the product they make that is another problem. Stick to the facts, there's enough misinformation here.