Wednesday, September 3, 2003
PalmGear Acquires Palm Digital Media from PalmSource
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "NEWS" @ 12:00 PM
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030903/sfw062_1.html
"PalmSource, Inc., provider of the popular Palm OS® operating system for handhelds and smart phones and a subsidiary of Palm, Inc. and PalmGear, Inc., the world's largest and longest running Palm OS-based consumer marketplace, today announced a strategic alliance designed to bolster the success of the Palm Economy. As part of the alliance, PalmGear acquired PalmSource's subsidiary Palm Digital Media, and will power a new PalmSource online store and license the "PalmGear," "Palm Digital Media" and "Palm Reader" brands." (Emphasis added)
Palm Digital Media was formed in 2000 when PalmOne, the PDA manufacturer formerly known as "Palm", aquired Peanut Press, which was later transferred to PalmSource in 2003. PalmSource is still part of Palm but will be spun off when the Palm-Handspring merger is completed this fall. That will leave PalmSource to work solely on the PalmOS and related products getting out of the publishing business.
I know the first thing you are thinking if you are a Palm Reader nut like I am is "What is going to happen to Palm Reader for the Pocket PC?" Well, I don't know, but if I had to guess, nothing, they will continue developing it. Business is business and PalmGear will be anxious to maintain their sales in ebooks and you can't do that by cutting off non-Palm clients. I understand the code for Palm Reader between the Mac, Pocket PC and Windows desktop is very similar so the cost to get that market is relatively small. Furthermore, PalmGear knows how to do one thing and one thing well - sell to consumers! PalmOne and PalmSource know how to market, but their sales focus was to large companies to then resale to consumers - PalmSource even more so. It seems they want to focus on the OS development and not get bogged down in dealing with publishers, authors and one-on-one customer support. For those of you still worried, consider this: If anyone was going to drop non-Palm clients, it would have been Palm itself. Instead, Palm Reader development surged during the Palm ownership days for all clients. The Pocket PC client is currently one of the best ebook readers around on any platform. Pocket PCs are by some reports making up over a third of the PDA sales market. They won't drop that.
Just browsing through PalmGear's site shows that it is consumer oriented. Several things I've wanted Palm Digital Media to incorporate are user reviews of books, similar to what Amazon does. PalmGear does that. Hopefully, they will begin to integrate that technology into Palm Digital Media's site. Having said that, there is a discussion in this thread at PalmInfoCenter that calls some past practices by PalmGear into question. Let us hope those days are past. 8O
Update: I have since talked to a few people at PalmGear and have some updated information. You can read about it in this post within the discussion thread.
"PalmSource, Inc., provider of the popular Palm OS® operating system for handhelds and smart phones and a subsidiary of Palm, Inc. and PalmGear, Inc., the world's largest and longest running Palm OS-based consumer marketplace, today announced a strategic alliance designed to bolster the success of the Palm Economy. As part of the alliance, PalmGear acquired PalmSource's subsidiary Palm Digital Media, and will power a new PalmSource online store and license the "PalmGear," "Palm Digital Media" and "Palm Reader" brands." (Emphasis added)
Palm Digital Media was formed in 2000 when PalmOne, the PDA manufacturer formerly known as "Palm", aquired Peanut Press, which was later transferred to PalmSource in 2003. PalmSource is still part of Palm but will be spun off when the Palm-Handspring merger is completed this fall. That will leave PalmSource to work solely on the PalmOS and related products getting out of the publishing business.
I know the first thing you are thinking if you are a Palm Reader nut like I am is "What is going to happen to Palm Reader for the Pocket PC?" Well, I don't know, but if I had to guess, nothing, they will continue developing it. Business is business and PalmGear will be anxious to maintain their sales in ebooks and you can't do that by cutting off non-Palm clients. I understand the code for Palm Reader between the Mac, Pocket PC and Windows desktop is very similar so the cost to get that market is relatively small. Furthermore, PalmGear knows how to do one thing and one thing well - sell to consumers! PalmOne and PalmSource know how to market, but their sales focus was to large companies to then resale to consumers - PalmSource even more so. It seems they want to focus on the OS development and not get bogged down in dealing with publishers, authors and one-on-one customer support. For those of you still worried, consider this: If anyone was going to drop non-Palm clients, it would have been Palm itself. Instead, Palm Reader development surged during the Palm ownership days for all clients. The Pocket PC client is currently one of the best ebook readers around on any platform. Pocket PCs are by some reports making up over a third of the PDA sales market. They won't drop that.
Just browsing through PalmGear's site shows that it is consumer oriented. Several things I've wanted Palm Digital Media to incorporate are user reviews of books, similar to what Amazon does. PalmGear does that. Hopefully, they will begin to integrate that technology into Palm Digital Media's site. Having said that, there is a discussion in this thread at PalmInfoCenter that calls some past practices by PalmGear into question. Let us hope those days are past. 8O
Update: I have since talked to a few people at PalmGear and have some updated information. You can read about it in this post within the discussion thread.
