Monday, September 26, 2005
The Road To The Windows Mobile Powered Treo 700w
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 04:00 AM
Rumors have been flying for months about the possibility of a Treo powered by Windows Mobile instead of the Palm OS. For the past few weeks, it has been almost certain it was real and today, it will be confirmed at 9am Pacific time in an event in San Francisco, including Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, and Denny Strigl, Verizon CEO.
For a look back though here are some of the highlights over the last few years at the sequence of events that have either directly or indirectly delivered us to where we are today.
April 19, 2000: Microsoft launches the Pocket PC, the long awaited and much needed replacement to its Palm-sized PC predecessor. Many considered this Microsoft's final attempt at some measure of success in the mobile operating system space, its earlier attempts never making much of a dent in the market. PalmOS market share is above 80% and Microsoft is barely hitting double digits. Microsoft got the user interface right and Compaq delivered the iPAQ 3600 series shortly thereafter, producing a wildly successful combination of hardware and software that had it selling for over $900 on ebay, nearly double the suggest retail price. The Pocket PC is born.
October 15, 2001: Handspring announces the Treo, releasing the first batch during 2002. The lowest end model, the Treo 90 didn't even have a phone, it was just a square screen with a keyboard rather than the fixed Graffiti area. That model didn't last long though as sales of the cellular enabled devices took off. It was clear even then that the standalone PDA's life was limited and wireless was the future. Microsoft had no serious competition to offer at this point. Pocket PC 2002 had just been announced and it would be months before the "Phone Edition" software was ready to go, and longer still before you could buy it. The Treo is born.
October 28, 2003: PalmSource is split off from Palm, Handspring is reabsorbed into Palm which becomes PalmOne. PalmSource was to be the operating system and software maker and license product to all manner of OEMs, including PalmOne, Sony, Garmin, Samsung and many others. At one time, Palm thought it was really a serious contender with Microsoft in the arena of platforms and server software. How many of you recall the Tungsten Mobile Information Management Server? We posted on this in September of 2002. Virtually none of the links in that post work anymore as Palm has erased all vestiges of that product from its publicly available website. I'd kill to get my hands on that PDF again. The product pitted itself squarely against Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Microsoft's own Mobile Information Server, which seamlessly (to the user at least - not for the IT department ;)) allowed users to synchronize their PDAs with their email accounts at work. Microsoft consolidated all of that into one product, Exchange 2003 while Palm quietly abandoned the project. Anyway, my point is, PalmSource had big visions for the future. Palm and Handspring would merge, bringing the successful Treo line back into the fold. Newly renamed, PalmOne would focus on hardware and great devices, PalmSource would focus on the next generation of PalmOS and would be able to more easily work with outside OEMs like Sony without having a Chinese Wall between the hardware and software sides. The split is crucial to PalmOne and a Windows Mobile Treo though as it allows for the first time for PalmOne to be platform agnostic and just build the best devices possible.
January 6, 2004: PalmSource releases Cobalt, or PalmOS 6 to its OEM partners. Cobalt is the ultimate Palm operating system. It will finally have real multitasking, or so we were told. Garnet, or PalmOS 5, is still largely PalmOS 4 sitting on top of new underpinnings that allow it to run on the widely accepted ARM processor. Applications run in PACE, or the Palm Application Compatibility Environment. Most PalmOS 4 applications run in it, except for hacks, and development changes little. Target your application for OS4 and write it well and it will work on OS5. There is no point compiling directly for the ARM processor as, for the most part, it won't work. That is what OS6 takes care of. Multitasking is achieved by rewriting all applications to save the state to the user is given the illusion of multitasking. There is a way to write some threads to run in the background, like a thread to monitor chat conversations or download email, but again, the app must be rewritten to do this and your place in the UI can be lost. For example, open an email and read three screens down of one message while other messages are downloading. Switch back to your calendar then back to email. Emails are still downloading, but you are back to the message list, not the email message, thus losing your place. It is possible for developers to overcome this by saving the state properly, but many don't. Multitasking is the domain of an operating system, not applications, and OS6 is the fix. No devices are ever released with Palm OS6.
January 27, 2004: PalmOne admits it is looking at other platforms.. No names are given, but it is obvious PalmOne, just three months after the split, is eager to increase sales and market presence with great hardware, using whatever OS makes sense.
February 4, 2004: PalmSource revamps their OS strategy again. OS 5, or Garnet, would still survive for low end devices while OS 6 would be targeted at more robust devices with its superior multitasking (whoops - see March 1 events) capabilities, multimedia features, better security, etc. Looking back, this announcement was simply to say that they were struggling with OS6, no one was buying it and if they didn't resurrect the OS5 development life cycle, PalmSource would quickly have nothing to sell.
March 1, 2004: PalmSource releases the OS 6 emulator to allow developers to get their applications ready. According to a PalmInfoCenter member, you must still write applications to save the state, so it still doesn't do true multitasking. Untold hours are spent by developers playing with the emulator and reworking their applications to make the most of OS6, all to no avail. They might as well have been writing applications for Taligent.
March 4, 2004: Pocket PC Thoughts breaks story on the press conference held by PalmOne that week where Todd Bradley, the palmOne CEO and Chairman, answered a question by an analyst about the possibility of a Microsoft based Treo. You can still hear the audio in the original post.
May 6, 2004: Rumors of a Windows Mobile powered Treo surface in mainstream media sites.
June 18, 2004: Frustration continues with writing device drivers for PalmOS devices. Unlike Windows Mobile devices, where as long as the developer targets the right year of the platform, it should work on every single device made with the platform, writing device drivers for PalmOS devices is maddening by comparison. Regardless of who's fault this is, PalmOne takes the hit because it is their devices people are complaining about. The introduction of SDIO WiFi cards heightens the tension as a plethora of SDIO equipped Palm devices can't use them while Windows Mobile drivers flow like hot syrup at your local IHOP. This has to factor to some extent in PalmOne's decision to license Windows Mobile.
September 28, 2004: PalmSource releases Cobalt 6.1 to its licensees. No devices have been released to date with this operating system on it.
October 5, 2004: PalmOne signs a deal with Microsoft to incorporate Exchange ActiveSync component into its devices. The Tungsten Mobile Information Management Server project is long since dead and if PalmOne doesn't get its hooks into the enterprise, RIM's Blackberry and Microsoft's Windows Mobile devices will clean Palm's clock. I think the Treo 650 is the first device to ship with this in ROM, allowing it to seamlessly connect to Exchange 2003. DataViz creates a client for other PalmOS devices to give them the same functionality. Still no PalmOS Cobalt devices.
November 1, 2004: Bad news for PalmSource. "Shares of PalmSource, the handheld operating system developer, dipped Monday on an investment bank's report that said key licensee PalmOne will use Microsoft's OS in its Treo line of devices. The research note from Needham & Co. said PalmOne "tacitly admitted" it was working to make Microsoft's handheld OS available on the popular Treo line of phones." PalmSource was trading above $20/share back then, at least 15% above the $17/share they are worth to Access, the Japanese company buying them.
For a look back though here are some of the highlights over the last few years at the sequence of events that have either directly or indirectly delivered us to where we are today.
April 19, 2000: Microsoft launches the Pocket PC, the long awaited and much needed replacement to its Palm-sized PC predecessor. Many considered this Microsoft's final attempt at some measure of success in the mobile operating system space, its earlier attempts never making much of a dent in the market. PalmOS market share is above 80% and Microsoft is barely hitting double digits. Microsoft got the user interface right and Compaq delivered the iPAQ 3600 series shortly thereafter, producing a wildly successful combination of hardware and software that had it selling for over $900 on ebay, nearly double the suggest retail price. The Pocket PC is born.
October 15, 2001: Handspring announces the Treo, releasing the first batch during 2002. The lowest end model, the Treo 90 didn't even have a phone, it was just a square screen with a keyboard rather than the fixed Graffiti area. That model didn't last long though as sales of the cellular enabled devices took off. It was clear even then that the standalone PDA's life was limited and wireless was the future. Microsoft had no serious competition to offer at this point. Pocket PC 2002 had just been announced and it would be months before the "Phone Edition" software was ready to go, and longer still before you could buy it. The Treo is born.
October 28, 2003: PalmSource is split off from Palm, Handspring is reabsorbed into Palm which becomes PalmOne. PalmSource was to be the operating system and software maker and license product to all manner of OEMs, including PalmOne, Sony, Garmin, Samsung and many others. At one time, Palm thought it was really a serious contender with Microsoft in the arena of platforms and server software. How many of you recall the Tungsten Mobile Information Management Server? We posted on this in September of 2002. Virtually none of the links in that post work anymore as Palm has erased all vestiges of that product from its publicly available website. I'd kill to get my hands on that PDF again. The product pitted itself squarely against Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Microsoft's own Mobile Information Server, which seamlessly (to the user at least - not for the IT department ;)) allowed users to synchronize their PDAs with their email accounts at work. Microsoft consolidated all of that into one product, Exchange 2003 while Palm quietly abandoned the project. Anyway, my point is, PalmSource had big visions for the future. Palm and Handspring would merge, bringing the successful Treo line back into the fold. Newly renamed, PalmOne would focus on hardware and great devices, PalmSource would focus on the next generation of PalmOS and would be able to more easily work with outside OEMs like Sony without having a Chinese Wall between the hardware and software sides. The split is crucial to PalmOne and a Windows Mobile Treo though as it allows for the first time for PalmOne to be platform agnostic and just build the best devices possible.
January 6, 2004: PalmSource releases Cobalt, or PalmOS 6 to its OEM partners. Cobalt is the ultimate Palm operating system. It will finally have real multitasking, or so we were told. Garnet, or PalmOS 5, is still largely PalmOS 4 sitting on top of new underpinnings that allow it to run on the widely accepted ARM processor. Applications run in PACE, or the Palm Application Compatibility Environment. Most PalmOS 4 applications run in it, except for hacks, and development changes little. Target your application for OS4 and write it well and it will work on OS5. There is no point compiling directly for the ARM processor as, for the most part, it won't work. That is what OS6 takes care of. Multitasking is achieved by rewriting all applications to save the state to the user is given the illusion of multitasking. There is a way to write some threads to run in the background, like a thread to monitor chat conversations or download email, but again, the app must be rewritten to do this and your place in the UI can be lost. For example, open an email and read three screens down of one message while other messages are downloading. Switch back to your calendar then back to email. Emails are still downloading, but you are back to the message list, not the email message, thus losing your place. It is possible for developers to overcome this by saving the state properly, but many don't. Multitasking is the domain of an operating system, not applications, and OS6 is the fix. No devices are ever released with Palm OS6.
January 27, 2004: PalmOne admits it is looking at other platforms.. No names are given, but it is obvious PalmOne, just three months after the split, is eager to increase sales and market presence with great hardware, using whatever OS makes sense.
February 4, 2004: PalmSource revamps their OS strategy again. OS 5, or Garnet, would still survive for low end devices while OS 6 would be targeted at more robust devices with its superior multitasking (whoops - see March 1 events) capabilities, multimedia features, better security, etc. Looking back, this announcement was simply to say that they were struggling with OS6, no one was buying it and if they didn't resurrect the OS5 development life cycle, PalmSource would quickly have nothing to sell.
March 1, 2004: PalmSource releases the OS 6 emulator to allow developers to get their applications ready. According to a PalmInfoCenter member, you must still write applications to save the state, so it still doesn't do true multitasking. Untold hours are spent by developers playing with the emulator and reworking their applications to make the most of OS6, all to no avail. They might as well have been writing applications for Taligent.
March 4, 2004: Pocket PC Thoughts breaks story on the press conference held by PalmOne that week where Todd Bradley, the palmOne CEO and Chairman, answered a question by an analyst about the possibility of a Microsoft based Treo. You can still hear the audio in the original post.
May 6, 2004: Rumors of a Windows Mobile powered Treo surface in mainstream media sites.
June 18, 2004: Frustration continues with writing device drivers for PalmOS devices. Unlike Windows Mobile devices, where as long as the developer targets the right year of the platform, it should work on every single device made with the platform, writing device drivers for PalmOS devices is maddening by comparison. Regardless of who's fault this is, PalmOne takes the hit because it is their devices people are complaining about. The introduction of SDIO WiFi cards heightens the tension as a plethora of SDIO equipped Palm devices can't use them while Windows Mobile drivers flow like hot syrup at your local IHOP. This has to factor to some extent in PalmOne's decision to license Windows Mobile.
September 28, 2004: PalmSource releases Cobalt 6.1 to its licensees. No devices have been released to date with this operating system on it.
October 5, 2004: PalmOne signs a deal with Microsoft to incorporate Exchange ActiveSync component into its devices. The Tungsten Mobile Information Management Server project is long since dead and if PalmOne doesn't get its hooks into the enterprise, RIM's Blackberry and Microsoft's Windows Mobile devices will clean Palm's clock. I think the Treo 650 is the first device to ship with this in ROM, allowing it to seamlessly connect to Exchange 2003. DataViz creates a client for other PalmOS devices to give them the same functionality. Still no PalmOS Cobalt devices.
November 1, 2004: Bad news for PalmSource. "Shares of PalmSource, the handheld operating system developer, dipped Monday on an investment bank's report that said key licensee PalmOne will use Microsoft's OS in its Treo line of devices. The research note from Needham & Co. said PalmOne "tacitly admitted" it was working to make Microsoft's handheld OS available on the popular Treo line of phones." PalmSource was trading above $20/share back then, at least 15% above the $17/share they are worth to Access, the Japanese company buying them.
