Friday, May 3, 2002
Palm CEO - Pocket PC a dangerous competitor to Palm
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 10:37 AM
http://news.com.com/2009-1040-898519.html?tag=rh_benhamou
CNet has a thirty minute taped interview with Palm interim CEO Eric Benhamou.
Some of the comments from the interview interspersed with my thoughts in italics.
• He went into a lot of detail about the split of the company into two divisions - hardware and software and the management that will run each. The Palm Source split will be totally complete in a few months.
• We are at the end of Phase 1 of the handheld market. Phase 2 is just starting. Phase 2 will be far larger than Phase 1. PIM takes a second seat. Very powerful ARM processors will enable Palm to take advantage of a ten-fold power increase allowing multimedia objects like sound and photos. This will open up the enterprise market. Doesn't this sound like what Pocket PCs did two years ago?
• Less than 5% of Palm OS devices (under 1.1M) have been deployed in the enterprise by IT staff.
• The magic Palm OS can do everything the Pocket PC can do with half of the memory and processing power. So, why bother upgrading to ARM? I've also yet to see an MP3 or JPG file shrink one iota as I moved it from a Pocket PC to a Palm.
• i705 sales will really depend on a new Palm server product to be released sometime this summer. Siebel is one of Palm's partners in getting this ready. I presume this will be in direct competition to Microsoft's now defunct Mobile Information Server as MIS is being integrated internally to Exchange's next version. Palm will not compete with Exchange but rather work with it. Palm Inc. in fact uses Exchange Server internally.
• Symbian is a competitor, but at a disadvantage. He avoided talking about the technology though.
• There was mention of a Treo competitor, but no details. This would also compete with Smartphone 2002 devices.
Thanks to Foo Fighter for the link.
CNet has a thirty minute taped interview with Palm interim CEO Eric Benhamou.
Some of the comments from the interview interspersed with my thoughts in italics.
• He went into a lot of detail about the split of the company into two divisions - hardware and software and the management that will run each. The Palm Source split will be totally complete in a few months.
• We are at the end of Phase 1 of the handheld market. Phase 2 is just starting. Phase 2 will be far larger than Phase 1. PIM takes a second seat. Very powerful ARM processors will enable Palm to take advantage of a ten-fold power increase allowing multimedia objects like sound and photos. This will open up the enterprise market. Doesn't this sound like what Pocket PCs did two years ago?
• Less than 5% of Palm OS devices (under 1.1M) have been deployed in the enterprise by IT staff.
• The magic Palm OS can do everything the Pocket PC can do with half of the memory and processing power. So, why bother upgrading to ARM? I've also yet to see an MP3 or JPG file shrink one iota as I moved it from a Pocket PC to a Palm.
• i705 sales will really depend on a new Palm server product to be released sometime this summer. Siebel is one of Palm's partners in getting this ready. I presume this will be in direct competition to Microsoft's now defunct Mobile Information Server as MIS is being integrated internally to Exchange's next version. Palm will not compete with Exchange but rather work with it. Palm Inc. in fact uses Exchange Server internally.
• Symbian is a competitor, but at a disadvantage. He avoided talking about the technology though.
• There was mention of a Treo competitor, but no details. This would also compete with Smartphone 2002 devices.
Thanks to Foo Fighter for the link.
