Friday, June 24, 2005
Nagel Says "Windows Mobile Will Never Dominate"
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 02:00 PM
http://www.pocketfactory.com/archives/2005/06/blast_from_the.php
"Microsoft will never dominate handheld computers because they will not develop like PCs, with different vendors cloning a standard hardware architecture running one operating system, according to the head of Palm's software arm Palmsource."
Of course, Nagel is no longer there, but these words found by Foo Fighter are exactly what is wrong with PalmOS devices today. PalmOne, for example, is taking this to such an extreme, each device has a different flavor of PalmOS on it, so much so that some apps aren't working. With every new OS, there are going to be some issues with software having to be updated, be it Windows XP, Mac OSX or Windows Mobile. However, once each major revision is released, if an application runs on one device it can be reasonably expected to run on all devices.
Not so pa1mOne devices. Jeff Kirvin has a rant on just this issue. It is an interesting listen on what is wrong with PalmOne right now and amazingly enough, he praises the Windows Mobile model of having one basic OS for the platform rather than a unique tweak for each and every device and also for Microsoft bringing developers into the beta process and ensuring they have plenty of documentation on the databases, APIs, drivers, etc.
It is interesting to me that as time marches on, the Microsoft way of doing mobile devices, once ridiculed and shunned in the late 90's and even for the first few years of 2000 is proving to be the best way to manage a true mobile platform. If you give each licensee enough wiggle room to do much more than surface customization, you run into the API nightmare that PalmOS has fostered for the last few years where developers are getting sick and tired of guessing and rewriting code for each new device and users have had it with buying a new device and finding out that their favorite software doesn't work right on it. Contrast that to Windows Mobile where it is the norm that once an app works on a given OS, say Windows Mobile 2003SE, it is a very safe bet it will work on all WM2003SE devices.
Oh yeah, and while Windows Mobile does not dominate the mobile device landscape now it is ahead of the PalmOS platform, and with devices on the SmartPhone side like the Audiovox SMT5600, Microsoft will continue to get an increasing share of the space. I am sure Nokia is no longer looking at MS as a mere gnat in this area.
"Microsoft will never dominate handheld computers because they will not develop like PCs, with different vendors cloning a standard hardware architecture running one operating system, according to the head of Palm's software arm Palmsource."
Of course, Nagel is no longer there, but these words found by Foo Fighter are exactly what is wrong with PalmOS devices today. PalmOne, for example, is taking this to such an extreme, each device has a different flavor of PalmOS on it, so much so that some apps aren't working. With every new OS, there are going to be some issues with software having to be updated, be it Windows XP, Mac OSX or Windows Mobile. However, once each major revision is released, if an application runs on one device it can be reasonably expected to run on all devices.
Not so pa1mOne devices. Jeff Kirvin has a rant on just this issue. It is an interesting listen on what is wrong with PalmOne right now and amazingly enough, he praises the Windows Mobile model of having one basic OS for the platform rather than a unique tweak for each and every device and also for Microsoft bringing developers into the beta process and ensuring they have plenty of documentation on the databases, APIs, drivers, etc.
It is interesting to me that as time marches on, the Microsoft way of doing mobile devices, once ridiculed and shunned in the late 90's and even for the first few years of 2000 is proving to be the best way to manage a true mobile platform. If you give each licensee enough wiggle room to do much more than surface customization, you run into the API nightmare that PalmOS has fostered for the last few years where developers are getting sick and tired of guessing and rewriting code for each new device and users have had it with buying a new device and finding out that their favorite software doesn't work right on it. Contrast that to Windows Mobile where it is the norm that once an app works on a given OS, say Windows Mobile 2003SE, it is a very safe bet it will work on all WM2003SE devices.
Oh yeah, and while Windows Mobile does not dominate the mobile device landscape now it is ahead of the PalmOS platform, and with devices on the SmartPhone side like the Audiovox SMT5600, Microsoft will continue to get an increasing share of the space. I am sure Nokia is no longer looking at MS as a mere gnat in this area.
