Forbes Predicts Upcoming Treo Releases

Forbes has a new article on Palm's upcoming product launches. Based on a conversation with a market analyst, the article claims UTMS & EVDO Palm OS Treos could arrive next year along with a new mid-range line of Treos selling for around $200.

The article states:

Kalla, who rates Palm at "buy," noted that the Windows Treo, with an EVDO radio function, should be in Verizon Wireless stores by the end of the fiscal third quarter ending February.

The replacement for the Treo 650, also with an EVDO radio, will ship in fiscal fourth quarter ending May to Verizon Wireless and also probably to Sprint Nextel, Kalla said. A version with a UMTS radio could ship to Cingular Wireless, likely closer to the end of the year. "We had previously thought the product would ship in the third quarter, but believe Palm delayed it so it can concentrate on the Windows Treo release."

Palm will also launch a line of mid-market Treos, with ASPs of about $200, later in fiscal 2006.

Thanks to Gaurav for the tip.

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Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!

sr4 @ 11/4/2005 3:19:25 PM # Q

Its going to be head to head, WM vs POS, the same device, same specs (bluetooth, evdo, 32Mb ram, 312Mhz processor), SAME SHELVES. Which one will win in SALES, which one will be more stable!! Its the experiment we have all been waiting for!! (well, some at least).

Surur

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
Frenchie @ 11/4/2005 3:25:33 PM # Q
Evdo?

Palm OS 5 doesn't have stack support for EVDO. Is this a signal of the advent of Cobalt?

The world will end in 2006. Just as it was predicted in the bible along with the release of Microsoft Longhorn.... :p

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
fierywater @ 11/4/2005 3:32:01 PM # Q
no, palm'll just continue to hack at garnet to enable evdo.

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
AdamaDBrown @ 11/4/2005 6:01:18 PM # Q
Before anyone panics, the 32 MB of memory referred to in the 700w is real RAM, not flash, so hopefully both it and the 700p (or whatever it's called) will have a more reasonable amount of main storage, like 128 MB.

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
anonyME @ 11/5/2005 11:49:28 AM # Q
Palm seems to have advantage with the square screen form factor. WM with square screen is not well supported. Besides, the stupidly wide WM scroll bars, top and bottom menu bars will just eat up all the screen space.

WM Palm device just doesn't stand a chance with the HTC WM ODM devices out there.

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
mbuhboot @ 11/6/2005 3:28:05 PM # Q
There is no such thing as "real RAM" an "unreal" RAM..

Every Palm - including the LifeDrive and the Treo 650 have RAM in it. In the new NVFS units it is used THE SAME WAY that WM5 uses it - for program execution (caching of programs), application "temporary" - aka heap and stack. And off-course - operating system caching.

So the Treo 700w and 700p share the SAME memory architecture physically and almost identical memory architecture.

Moshe

RE: Its head to head!! WM vs POS !!
fishtastic @ 11/6/2005 6:51:48 PM # Q
anonyME said

"Palm seems to have advantage with the square screen form factor. WM with square screen is not well supported. Besides, the stupidly wide WM scroll bars, top and bottom menu bars will just eat up all the screen space.

WM Palm device just doesn't stand a chance with the HTC WM ODM devices out there."

Yep you're right, I wouldn't buy a 240*240 WinMob product its a crazy resolution without good software support. In fact that's why I bought a Universal, nice 640*480 screen.

Fish

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Gates says "How you like me now?"

Gekko @ 11/4/2005 5:37:17 PM # Q

"Palm delayed it so it can concentrate on the Windows Treo release."



RE: Gates says "How do you like me now?"
twrock @ 11/4/2005 6:29:15 PM # Q
Just one more reason not to.

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."
Reply to this comment

Is there anything for Christmas or 2006 Q1?

asiayeah @ 11/4/2005 6:51:43 PM # Q
While lots of new smartphones are announced by Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson by either end of this year or Q1 2006, is there any new Palm OS based smartphones from Palm for the same period?

--
With great power comes great responsiblity.
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Lowrider and Hollywood - more details emerge.

sr4 @ 11/4/2005 6:57:41 PM # Q
"We also just got some more news about what’s going on with the Treos, this time not only from Palm’s side of the game, but also from HTC’s. According to a leaked analyst report from a very well known firm that we got our hands on, Palm plans switching large amounts of ODM orders from HTC to Inventec Appliance in late Q1 2006, with expectations of eventually primarily partnering with Inventec for device-making. According to the analyst report, Treos account for 15-20% of HTC’s device sales, which is very interesting — but what’s even more interesting are the details about two new Treos probably being planned with Inventec. The first is codenamed “Hollywood,” and is supposedly going to be a very thin 3G device with no external antenna; the second is the “Lowrider” (we’ll save you the obligatory War reference), which could well be the same lower end consumer device we just heard about from Caris & Co."

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000107066688/

RE: Lowrider and Hollywood - more details emerge.
twizza @ 11/4/2005 9:16:24 PM # Q
Surur;
Just to let you know, I really appreciate ya. This is a good find.

mobileministrymagazine.com
antoinerjwright.com
RE: Lowrider and Hollywood - more details emerge.
LiveFaith @ 11/4/2005 9:57:11 PM # Q
Ooooh. A thin antennaless model. That's exciting! The RAZR type smartfone by Moto can easily be outdistanced with a much better implementation. Thin is in and Palm is smart to go there.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: Lowrider and Hollywood - more details emerge.
Simony @ 11/5/2005 1:57:43 AM # Q
A thin antennaless KEYBOARDLESS model would be better - just like some of your mock-ups, LiveFaith.

RE: Lowrider and Hollywood - more details emerge.
LiveFaith @ 11/6/2005 8:06:59 PM # Q
They pay me all this money to develop ... then don't use em'. I can't understand it?

Actually, I am ready to jump on an HVGA/VGA PDA-centric device with GSM connectivity. I think others are as well, but Palm laid the i705 + T|W eggs awhile back and seems reluctant to throw more "good $$$ after bad". I would start saving pennies tommorrow if I knew that something like the Palm OS Cingular 8215 was coming.

http://www.churchoflivingfaith.com/images/htc8215.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

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What is EVDO radio???

elbert27 @ 11/4/2005 7:04:18 PM # Q
Forgive me for asking, but what the heck is EVDO radio??? Is it satelite XM radio? or Is it an upgrade from Bluetooth?

RE: What is EVDO radio???
Gekko @ 11/4/2005 7:15:33 PM # Q

Google



RE: What is EVDO radio???
AdamaDBrown @ 11/4/2005 10:20:14 PM # Q
Moving past Gekko's snippy reply, EVDO is a high-speed data standard for CDMA networks. An EVDO device can get speeds up to 500 Kbits per second on EVDO, sometimes even faster.

Reply to this comment

Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%

sr4 @ 11/4/2005 6:59:53 PM # Q
"Treos account for 15-20% of HTC’s device sales,"

Ive been waiting for a long time now for updated figures from the POS vs WM sales situation. Unfortuanately Canalys decided not to publish these figures on this occasion. The last accurate information we have is from Q2 2005, when is was 1157720 (POS) vs 1931630 (WM), leading to a 37% vs 63% split.

Using the very small snippit of information, we can put bounds to the current situation marketshare wise.

POS Treo's=53% of Palm's shipments = 1053390*53%=558297 devices.

At 15% of HTC devices, thats 3721978 total HTC devices, meaning the split is 28% vs 72%

At 20% of HTC devices, thats 2791483 total HTC devices, meaning the split is 37% vs 63%

So the upper bound of POS vs WM marketshare is 37%, and this excludes approximately 500 000 WM devices made by other ODM's (HP, Acer, Mio, Eten). (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS00266705 )

When added to the HTC count one gets about 1 million POS devices produced, vs 3-4 million WM devices produced. Thats 20-25% marketshare (if they all sell out of course).

Any critisims and corrections welcome.

Surur

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Rome @ 11/4/2005 10:18:54 PM # Q
Let me give that a try, Surur.

"Treos account for 15-20% of HTC’s device sales,"

It is not clear from this statement if the analyst meant revenue or unit shipments. Given that the author is a financial analyst, I am leaning toward revenue instead of unit shipments. And I am pretty sure that HTC didn't generate 100% of their revenue from hardware sales only. Also keep in mind that HTC gets meaningfully less revenue on a Treo than on a comparable WM device, since Palm does all the software work and some hardware design work as well.

"So the upper bound of POS vs WM marketshare is 37%, and this excludes approximately 500 000 WM devices made by other ODM's (HP, Acer, Mio, Eten). (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS00266705 )"

If my memory serves me right, HTC also makes PDAs and smartphones for HP and Dell(PDA only), so there are not 500K of WM devices missing. Furthermore, a significant number of HTC devices shipped are based on the Windows Smartphone platform, which are more feature phones than smartphones. Not sure if they are included in the IDC or Canaly's reports.

"When added to the HTC count one gets about 1 million POS devices produced, vs 3-4 million WM devices produced. Thats 20-25% marketshare (if they all sell out of course)."

Palm is not the only make of Palm OS devices. There are others as you are fully aware. So your 1 million number is too low. And I think your WM device count is too high based on my points above.

Surur, don't let your love for all things Microsoft cloud your judgement and analytical ability.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
AdamaDBrown @ 11/4/2005 10:20:28 PM # Q
The problem with your figures is that they don't account for other possible devices being produced by HTC. For instance, does anyone know if Palm has used HTC to produce the TX? Also, HP used to use HTC to produce many of their iPaqs. They've taken the designs and engineering in-house for the recent models, but I've never seen a clear answer whether or not they had HTC build them. This makes a direct extrapolation difficult.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Dr Opinion @ 11/4/2005 11:04:03 PM # Q
I went down to the bagel shop today. For one hour I carefully counted the number of bagels vs the number of muffins sold: 53 vs 24, including a number of bagel orders including a complimentary coffee, and also counting a single gift box of 12 muffins. :)

I then multipled 53 by the constant, k, and added a special padding factor to the muffin total of 24. From this I was able to infer that the split between wince and Palm marketshare was 28% vs 72% respectively at the upper bound, and 37% vs 63% at the lower bound. :)

Comments or corrections welcome. :)

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

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Captain Hair @ 11/4/2005 11:39:22 PM # Q
HTC isn't the only hardware manufacturer out there. You're drawing faulty conclusions from incomplete data. Try again.

"People who think they're smart annoy those of us who are."
RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
fierywater @ 11/5/2005 12:18:42 AM # Q
HTC's figures are still significant, despite the fact that they're not the only hardware manufacturer, because they're the largest by far. I'm not sure how it happened, but you'd be hard-pressed to buy a Treo or WM smartphone that wasn't assembled by HTC. I realize there are a few exceptions, but HTC's got a major grip on the smartphone (and to a lesser extent, the PDA) market.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
AdamaDBrown @ 11/5/2005 4:07:32 AM # Q
If you look at Palm OS units not produced by Palm Inc., they're low enough to be almost irrelevant (less than 1/10th of Palm's output, at any rate). And HTC is by far the ten kiloton gorilla of the handheld market. I wouldn't be surprised if non-HTC Windows devices only added up to about 1/4 of HTC's total output. But the numbers still don't scale, because you don't have a proper breakdown of what HTC is producing. You would need clear and accurate figures for what HTC builds and how many of them are for other companies before you could properly weight the scales.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
sr4 @ 11/5/2005 4:52:42 AM # Q

All your critisims are accurate, though not necessarily correct. I would appreciate any more solid data that can be brought to bear on the subject. However if we do not extrapolate from incomplete data we would not be human, but computers. Unfortuanately there has been a recent conspiracy of silence regarding the real situation, so one has to scrape at every little bit of data one can get.

BTW D.O., for once your post actually made me chuckle. Keep it up.

Surur

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
anonyME @ 11/5/2005 11:21:56 AM # Q
"However if we do not extrapolate from incomplete data we would not be human"

Surur. I tend to agree with you above. But only a fool would do such an extrapolation on a grossly incomplete data and post it on a public forum and hope that it would support his agenda.

So what is it with you and POS/WM market share, Surur? Everybody knows Palm is in trouble and Microsoft has a lot of money. And, then? The sky is falling? This PDA/smartphone thing is like pencil and paper. People buy as needed. Whatever is good and available at the time of purchase. If it's not good enough, then get another one.

Geesh, some people need to get a life. And, a wife and some kids.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
cervezas @ 11/5/2005 11:44:37 AM # Q
Adding to the uncertainty in drawing conclusions from these figures, there's also the fact that HTC makes devices that are completely out of the ballpark we're interested in here: vertical market devices, devices for telecom operators, service providers, etc. The statement was that "Treos account for 15-20% of HTC’s device sales," not of HTC's smartphone sales or PDA sales.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Simony @ 11/5/2005 9:03:10 PM # Q
Well, you can have all sorts of fun when you do math like this.

For instance, let's say that the FUD campaign conducted with such viciousness here at PIC has caused (directly or indirectly) Palm to lose only 100,000 in lost units sales. If the average selling price is only $300 per unit, this comes to lost sales of $3,000,000.

Congratulations, Whiners, you have managed to lose more money for Palm than you will ever see in the whole of your miserable lives. But what did you gain from this?

Simony Math 101
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2005 9:50:39 PM # Q
Well, you can have all sorts of fun when you do math like this.

For instance, let's say that the FUD campaign conducted with such viciousness here at PIC has caused (directly or indirectly) Palm to lose only 100,000 in lost units sales. If the average selling price is only $300 per unit, this comes to lost sales of $3,000,000.

Let's play a game.

It's called Simony Math 101.

Let's pretend that anyone actually pays attention to what is posted at Palminfocenter when deciding whether or not to purchase a Palm. In fact, let's assume 100,000 lemmings... umm... potential customers are frightened by Surur posting the odd link illustrating that PalmOS is in rough shape and that the Palm Companies™ are adrift, rudderless and captainless. Let's assume each lost sale would have been $300. OK. Math time:

Question 1

100,000 x $300,000 = ?

a) 3,000,000
b) 300,000,000
c) 3 billion
d) 30,000,000
e) I don't know. I'm just a stupid Palm Apologist that does math on my fingers and toes. Please stop laughing at me.

Congratulations, Whiners, you have managed to lose more money for Palm than you will ever see in the whole of your miserable lives. But what did you gain from this?

Let's keep playing. I now see Simony has changed her/his/its mind and wants to choose "e". Is that your final answer? Are you SURE? OK.

Now how much profit is Palm making on its devices? Back in 1999 it was a staggering 45%. Now it's just (an amazing) 30%. So how much profit did EVIL Mr. Surur et. al. STEAL from Palm's coffers with their dastardly "FUD campaign conducted with such viciousness here at PIC"? Math time:

Question 2

(Answer from Question 1) x (30)/(100) = ?

a) $900,000
b) $90,000,000
c) $900,000,000
d) $9,000,000
e) My head hurts. Can I have my bottle now Mommy?

Wow. It looks like The Bad People are costing Palm a LOT of money. I'll bet EVIL Bill Gates pays them a LOT of money to posts factual information to Palminfocenter. I wonder what Palm could do to stop The Bad People? Dr. Opinion/Jeff Kirvin: can you tell the class what you think Palm should do?

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

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Simony @ 11/5/2005 10:36:28 PM # Q
> Let's pretend that anyone actually pays attention to what is posted at Palminfocenter when deciding whether or not to purchase a Palm. In fact, let's assume 100,000 lemmings... umm... potential customers are frightened by Surur posting the odd link illustrating that PalmOS is in rough shape and that the Palm Companies™ are adrift, rudderless and captainless.

If you think they don't pay attention, why do you incessantly continue your comedy rountine here? Bozo.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Simony @ 11/5/2005 10:52:32 PM # Q
Answer the question, grasshopper.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
viqsi @ 11/5/2005 10:56:46 PM # Q
Don't mind him. He's just been bitter ever since Sony discovered his market segment is unprofitable.

--
Of course, I don't know how interesting any of this really is, but now you've got it in your brain cells so you're stuck with it. --Gary Larson
RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Dr Opinion @ 11/6/2005 1:16:02 AM # Q
> "...It looks like The Bad People are costing Palm a LOT of money..."

Not really. But it's a mindshare thing. Microdick has definitely got into the habit of sending shills to whine on competitors message boards. Quite preceisely what they hope to achieve is not clear. It's entirely possible that the only reason for the existence of the shills here is so that people running the microsuck mind**** on the MCSE message boards can link to voice-of-dumbness or adama posts on PIC to show how the competition is in "disarray". :)

> "...I'll bet EVIL Bill Gates pays them a LOT of money..."

No. Bill is very sensitive about getting what he pays for... if Bill was really running the show, we'd have shills with a little more smarts, range, and talent, right? :)

While the desperation and repetition of the shills here strongly suggests they are being paid, it's entirely possible they are just pitiful minions in the microsuck machine who have been told to post here by their supervisors. Suror and adama certainly seem to fit that mold. :)

> "...I wonder what Palm could do to stop The Bad People?..."

Palm already does what it needs to: producing better smartphones and PDAs than microsuck. Better, sleeker, cheaper devices, more applications, hotsync that actually works, vastly superior office integration (how ironic), and of course, Palm is actually profitable. The closure of wince division stongly suggests that Palm is doing the right thing. :)


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

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Dr Opinion @ 11/6/2005 1:28:03 AM # Q
> "...why do you incessantly continue your comedy rountine here? Bozo..."

That's easy. Look at voice-of-dumbness's signature. He was a wanna-be day trader who overinvested in Palm back in the dotcom boom, he lost a lot of money, and he's still angry. I think Jeff Kiving gave him the "hot tip". Ha ha ha. :)



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

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Simony @ 11/6/2005 2:35:42 AM # Q
Answer the question, grasshopper.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
sr4 @ 11/6/2005 3:53:52 AM # Q
Simony, stop being so sensitive. Either these boards make a difference or they dont. We've had the honorable Marty Fouts and David Shlesinger from PalmSource come here, spouting garbage and then saying very directly that these boards are inconsequential. Who are you to argue? Its madness to imply that my postings here would cause Palm to lose 10% of their quarterly sales, when places like the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102900130.html ) publish much more scathing articles to a gigantic audience, or Colligan standing on the same stage as Bill Gates telling us why WM was a better OS than POS for their new phone.

Simony, I know you would prefer a universe without critics, where Palm still sells 10 million 8MB green screen devices, but the world has moved on, and Palm has to compete on merrits. I've not said anything much bad about the Tx and Z22, as no reasonable person could argue with the great value. Let Palm compete for mindshare with great products, not by promoting a pollyanna attitude on the message boards.

And at least I can multiply.

Surur

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Sam H @ 11/6/2005 5:58:50 AM # Q
Well, you can have all sorts of fun when you do math like this.

For instance, let's say that the FUD campaign conducted with such viciousness here at PIC has caused (directly or indirectly) Palm to lose only 100,000 in lost units sales. If the average selling price is only $300 per unit, this comes to lost sales of $3,000,000.

See D.O., this is what will happen to you if you skip math class to post on PIC.

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Dr Opinion @ 11/6/2005 7:20:57 AM # Q
> "...spouting garbage and then saying very directly that these boards are inconsequential..."

You seem to be confused: that was voice-of-dumbness. :)

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

RE: Sales figures WM 80% POS 20%
Dr Opinion @ 11/6/2005 7:24:36 AM # Q
> "...or Colligan standing on the same stage as Bill Gates telling us why WM was a better OS than POS for their new phone..."

Actually, Colligan simply stated that microsuck had invested substantially in Palm to create the device. It was kinda funny, Bill Gates looked really annoyed for a bit after Colligan spilled the beans. :)

I guess all along microsuck had been hoping to flip the spend into some kind of marketing buzz about wince. Of course, with the wince division being wound down and rolled into "entertainment", the wince treo has turned out to be nothing more than a huge embarassment for microsuck:

(1) No wince licencee was able to build a device that could compete with the Treo. Microsuck tried desperated to find another "Treo killer" for years before finally having to heavily fund their direct competitior just to have a chance of playing in the smartphone space. Hilarious. :)

(2) The wince Treo has cost microsuck millions, and its clear to insiders that microsuck is extremely unlikely to come close to recovering that investment before wince is obsoleted and replaced in late 2006/early 2007. It is well known in the industry that microsuck is planning to drop wince in favor of a mobile XP derivative in the 12-18 month time frame. :)

Yes, there remains the possibility of delays in all non-longhorn products if (as expected) longhorn fails internal quality checks in 2006 and microsuck begins to panic... Apple MacOSX on Intel will be shipping by 2006, and if Dell offers OSX on their PCs before longhorn ships, microsuck will drop from an A-player to B-player in core-product share in a single release. :)

These are really bad times for microsuck. OSX coming to PC, open source killing MS Office, Palm dominating in smartphone, google ruling web services, PalmSource creating an OS that makes wince irrelevant, and Sony leading in consoles. Its hard to find a single place where microsuck is safe. :)

Gotta love progress, right? :)

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

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