Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Palm OS is hot again
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 11:59 AM
http://www.brighthand.com/newsite/features/marketshare.html
Now here's an article that should stir up some...interesting discussion. Last year, Palm was inches from death - and this year, by all appearances, they seem to be surviving quite nicely. The innovation of their licensee's certainly helped - if they didn't have Sony, I'm not sure where they'd be now. Despite what some of you may think, I never wished for the death of Palm - what I wanted was market parity so companies would release solutions for the Pocket PC and not just the Palm because it was the dominant PDA. In order for that to happen, Palm needed to be taken down a few notches in the market - and they were. I'd still like to see the Pocket PC with 50% market share, but I'm confident that will happen soon enough. Here's the intro from the Brighthand column:
"Despite what you may have heard, the death of Palm OS has been greatly exaggerated. According to the latest industry statistics, Palm OS continues to dominate the handheld market, and it's not just hanging on to existing marketshare, it's growing. Over the last eight weeks alone, Palm OS retail unit share of the market has increased by more than 10 percentage points, to 87.2 percent of the U.S. market, (NPDTechworld, Weekly U.S. Retail Data, February 17 to April 7, 2002). And it's not just in the U.S., Palm OS also appears to be recovering European marketshare it lost in 2001 to Pocket PC. In its April 2002 Mobile Device Market Overview, Canalys reported that Palm OS remains the leading mobile device software in Europe, with its marketshare having risen from 31 percent in the fall of 2001 to 43 percent in the first quarter of 2002."
It should be noted that Brighthand is the official discussion board for Palm.
Now here's an article that should stir up some...interesting discussion. Last year, Palm was inches from death - and this year, by all appearances, they seem to be surviving quite nicely. The innovation of their licensee's certainly helped - if they didn't have Sony, I'm not sure where they'd be now. Despite what some of you may think, I never wished for the death of Palm - what I wanted was market parity so companies would release solutions for the Pocket PC and not just the Palm because it was the dominant PDA. In order for that to happen, Palm needed to be taken down a few notches in the market - and they were. I'd still like to see the Pocket PC with 50% market share, but I'm confident that will happen soon enough. Here's the intro from the Brighthand column:
"Despite what you may have heard, the death of Palm OS has been greatly exaggerated. According to the latest industry statistics, Palm OS continues to dominate the handheld market, and it's not just hanging on to existing marketshare, it's growing. Over the last eight weeks alone, Palm OS retail unit share of the market has increased by more than 10 percentage points, to 87.2 percent of the U.S. market, (NPDTechworld, Weekly U.S. Retail Data, February 17 to April 7, 2002). And it's not just in the U.S., Palm OS also appears to be recovering European marketshare it lost in 2001 to Pocket PC. In its April 2002 Mobile Device Market Overview, Canalys reported that Palm OS remains the leading mobile device software in Europe, with its marketshare having risen from 31 percent in the fall of 2001 to 43 percent in the first quarter of 2002."
It should be noted that Brighthand is the official discussion board for Palm.
