Sunday, March 9, 2003
Samsung To Abandon PalmOS and Focus On Pocket PC?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 03:00 PM
http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=1232&showComments=true
bargainPDA had an interview with a person named Mac, which is a field tech for Airgate Solutions, a Sprint PC distribution partner. Even better though is that Mac has a friend within Samsung's design department. The whole interview is interesting, but here is the question that piqued my interest:
bPDA – "Do you have any insight on why Samsung is going with two operating systems? Sony also has this issue. Their Clie line uses Palm OS, but the Sony Ericsson devices like the P800 use Symbian. Sony’s CEO even thinks this odd."
Mac – "It is odd, but get this. The i500 is the last phone that Samsung will produce with Palm OS. This news I think is the news that will kill the Betamax of the millennium. Palm OS is surviving because of the cell phone bit and I think will die by end of 04 or beginning of 05."
I have been saying this for a long time. The PalmOS is not suited for phones. A PalmOS phone is a cobbled together device that has electronic duct tape holding it together. The Treo is a miserable email device compared to the RIM and not a great PDA since you are constantly switching between the keypad and stylus. Palm must go back to square one and integrate keyboard and joypad support into every aspect of their OS to make phone devices possible. Microsoft has done this with the Smartphone 2002 device but they too need to work on the Pocket PC Phone keyboard integration. The difference that I see is MS realizes this and is working on it. MS realized years ago that slapping the Pocket PC OS into a phone wouldn't make a great voice centric device and started almost from scratch with the Smartphone OS. Will PalmSource realize the mistake of trying to force a data centric OS into a one-size-fits-all solution for phones?
Obviously, Samsung doesn't think so.
bargainPDA had an interview with a person named Mac, which is a field tech for Airgate Solutions, a Sprint PC distribution partner. Even better though is that Mac has a friend within Samsung's design department. The whole interview is interesting, but here is the question that piqued my interest:
bPDA – "Do you have any insight on why Samsung is going with two operating systems? Sony also has this issue. Their Clie line uses Palm OS, but the Sony Ericsson devices like the P800 use Symbian. Sony’s CEO even thinks this odd."
Mac – "It is odd, but get this. The i500 is the last phone that Samsung will produce with Palm OS. This news I think is the news that will kill the Betamax of the millennium. Palm OS is surviving because of the cell phone bit and I think will die by end of 04 or beginning of 05."
I have been saying this for a long time. The PalmOS is not suited for phones. A PalmOS phone is a cobbled together device that has electronic duct tape holding it together. The Treo is a miserable email device compared to the RIM and not a great PDA since you are constantly switching between the keypad and stylus. Palm must go back to square one and integrate keyboard and joypad support into every aspect of their OS to make phone devices possible. Microsoft has done this with the Smartphone 2002 device but they too need to work on the Pocket PC Phone keyboard integration. The difference that I see is MS realizes this and is working on it. MS realized years ago that slapping the Pocket PC OS into a phone wouldn't make a great voice centric device and started almost from scratch with the Smartphone OS. Will PalmSource realize the mistake of trying to force a data centric OS into a one-size-fits-all solution for phones?
Obviously, Samsung doesn't think so.
