Friday, October 3, 2003
Glass Floors, Iron Ceilings, And A Blowtorch
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 03:00 PM
Tyler Regis of PDAHandyMan is now writing for Lockergnome's Tech Specialist, and he's written up an interesting opinion piece on the current state of the industry - go give it a read and tell me if you agree with him (you'll need to scroll down to the end of the issue to find it).
"I hurt my head standing up. There wasn't supposed to be a big, dark slab of iron on the ceiling, but it was there, and I damaged my skull on it. It occurred to me then that the pain I was feeling must be something akin to what both PalmSource, also known as palmOne, and Microsoft's mobility development team must be experiencing. Tectonic plates in the Earth's crust get all upset when one starts rubbing against another. We call the results tremors or earthquakes, but that sort of geological activity seems to be applicable to the handheld market of late as well.
Prior to the release of more recent Pocket PC 2002 devices like the Toshiba e3xx series, ViewSonic V35, and the upcoming Windows Mobile 2003-powered Dell Axim X3, Pocket PC handhelds were premium priced and generally considered luxury items as opposed to "real" PDAs. Consumers willing to spend US$500+ could participate in the mobile world as envisioned by Microsoft. If your purse required more reasonable expenditures, Palm OS-based devices, priced from US$99 and up, were the buyer's target. This division in the market has driven Palm's continued success, allowing them to watch their competitors through a glass floor, and has kept Microsoft's devices under the iron ceiling. Microsoft, replete with resources, bought itself a blowtorch."
"I hurt my head standing up. There wasn't supposed to be a big, dark slab of iron on the ceiling, but it was there, and I damaged my skull on it. It occurred to me then that the pain I was feeling must be something akin to what both PalmSource, also known as palmOne, and Microsoft's mobility development team must be experiencing. Tectonic plates in the Earth's crust get all upset when one starts rubbing against another. We call the results tremors or earthquakes, but that sort of geological activity seems to be applicable to the handheld market of late as well.
Prior to the release of more recent Pocket PC 2002 devices like the Toshiba e3xx series, ViewSonic V35, and the upcoming Windows Mobile 2003-powered Dell Axim X3, Pocket PC handhelds were premium priced and generally considered luxury items as opposed to "real" PDAs. Consumers willing to spend US$500+ could participate in the mobile world as envisioned by Microsoft. If your purse required more reasonable expenditures, Palm OS-based devices, priced from US$99 and up, were the buyer's target. This division in the market has driven Palm's continued success, allowing them to watch their competitors through a glass floor, and has kept Microsoft's devices under the iron ceiling. Microsoft, replete with resources, bought itself a blowtorch."
