Hands Down, Palm is Now Number Two 239
jamesl writes "InformationWeek reports that the number one PDA operating system now comes from Redmond, 48.1% last quarter (41.2% a year ago) compared to 29.8% (46.9% last year) for PalmSource. The big gainer was RIM, up to 19.8% from 4.9%. Linux ... a valient 0.9%, off slightly from last years' 1.9%.
The article has some thoughts about where the market is going with phones taking on more PDA functions."
Convergence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Convergence (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll fall
Re:Convergence (Score:2)
For instance, SIM locking support is terrible. Its so bad they need to recall the phone. Who uses a phone without SIM lock?
If i go somewhere the signal is lost, it appears when the signal comes back the phone wants my SIM again. but since its in my pocket I dont see the dialog asking for it. About ever
Re:Convergence (Score:2)
Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5526.html
"It should be noted that these percentages apply only to the handheld market, which for the purposes of this study excludes the widely-popular palmOne Treo 600. The Treo line has had a long history of reclassification, and often bounces back and forth between different market categories in different studies."
Gartner has had a long history of producing studies that suggest Palm is losing to Microsoft. Their latest tactic seems to be to exclude the best selling Palm product from their studies.
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:2, Informative)
Hard to get phones (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:2)
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:5, Interesting)
On the flip side, a few years back I worked for a company that was on Gartner's shit list. There we were regulary beaten up on the magic quadrant for not having technology that we'd INVENTED and brought to market first. Hello?
Making decisions based on Gartner's recommendations is about as smart as using a dartboard.
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:2)
Disgusting metaphor for industrial graft? Or subtle clue as to the AC's unnamed employer? Maybe both? You be the judge.
Re:Gartner's numbers are always suspect (Score:2)
I need to find more info on this, because if they excluded the Treo, did they also exclude all the MS PPC phones and Blackberry phones? Either way, PalmOne (hardware company) has all but ditched the PDA market to focus on the smartphone market. Ed Colligan (p1 pres) has stated that they will have a "Treo family" to provide a variety of smartphones. treocentral.com
Microsoft wins this one fair and square (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank God for Moore's Law
Surur
You've got to be kidding me... (Score:4, Insightful)
For one thing, PalmOS has got a much simpler and more elegant user interface than its rival (Why the hell would anyone think that a desktop metaphor is suitable for a PDA?) and for another it's far faster than it too.
When I'm looking up an address or want to enter a quick note then I don't want to have to navigate through a menu system to get there first and wait while everything happens.
The key advantage PocketPCs have over Palms is the Microsoft factor: just as it has with other markets (eg, web browsers), Microsoft has leveraged its dominance in one market (desktop OS) to achieve success in another.
To suggest that PocketPCs are intrinsically superior to equivalent Palm models is hilarious.
If I were a tad more paranoid, I'd suggest that your comment and one or two others like it I've seen posted about this story were classic cases of astroturfing.
Re:You've got to be kidding me... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you think that Microsofts WinCE division would have been losing around $250 million per quarter( for the last 8+ years ) if Microsoft was not paying people/companies to use it? Unlikely.
LoB
Re:You've got to be kidding me... (Score:2)
I'd rather have a device that works better rather than one that's marketed better.
Re:You've got to be kidding me... (Score:4, Insightful)
But the OS just isn't there. I was going to start writing apps for it, but most of the cool features are supported through Sony-specific API extensions to PalmOS. With sony out of the market (the TH55 is discontinued) that's a dead end. I looked for Palm's API's, and it seems to be a mess - the various palm-based devices use different extensions for the same thing, and finding info on them is hard.
Finally I asked my office mate about it. He develops Palm software on the side. He said to ensure quality you have to posess each target device, because each has its own quirks and the emulator isn't accurate. That killed it for me.
There's a bright side to more PC-like handhelds - they're much more likely to get Linux ports [ipaqlinux.com]. I love the idea of a small, sleek, Linux-based PDA, but the commercial market isn't there and it won't happen. The Zaurus is just too big and heavy, whereas the smaller iPaqs are even quite a bit thinner than the Tungsten T3.
Finally, I should add that I recently tried a co-worker's new IPaq and the handwriting recognition blows away anything I've seen for the Palm.
Re:You've got to be kidding me... (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft wins this one fair and square (Score:2)
Given the posts elsewhere, I'd question the numbers.
The article says Microsoft shipped a l
Re:Microsoft wins this one fair and square (Score:2)
Well except for paying for skewed studies from Gartner that is.
Article (Score:3, Informative)
----
Microsoft Seizes PDA Market Lead From PalmSource
Microsoft led the market in the third quarter for operating systems used in personal digital assistants, surpassing for the first time the Palm OS that dominated the handheld-computer segment for years.
By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb, InformationWeek
Nov. 12, 2004
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
Microsoft Corp. led the market in the third quarter for operating systems used in personal digital assistants, surpassing for the first time the Palm OS that dominated the handheld-computer segment for years.
The Redmond, Wash., company shipped 1.38 million units of Windows CE in the quarter ended Sept. 30, accounting for 48.1 percent of the market, researcher Gartner Inc. said Friday. PalmSource trailed far behind with 850,821 units, or 29.8 percent of the market.
During the same period a year ago, PalmSource shipped 1.2 million units, 46.9 percent of the market, compared with Microsoft's 1.04 million units, or 41.2 percent.
The switch was not a surprise, given PalmSource's focus on supplying an OS for advanced cellular phones, called "smartphones," that contain many of the same features as PDAs, such as contact lists, personal calendars and email. PalmSource's Palm OS is used in smartphones from PalmOne Inc. and Kyocera Wireless Corp.
"They've abdicated their leadership in the PDA market in order to become a significant player in the smartphone market," Gartner analyst Todd Kort said of PalmSource.
The market's No. 3 operating system is from Research In Motion Ltd, which supplies the OS for its own BlackBerry PDA, a device that's popular among businesspeople. OS shipments increased more than 350 percent in the quarter to 565,000 units from 123,775 a year ago. RIM's market share rose to 19.8 percent from 4.9 percent.
Linux was the No. 4 operating system, but its market share dropped to 0.9 percent from 1.9 percent a year ago.
Driven by RIM's success with the Blackberry, the overall PDA hardware market increased in the quarter 13.6 percent to 2.86 million units from 2.52 million units a year ago, according to Gartner. The same driver is expected to account for most of a 4 percent increase for the year to about 12 million units.
Given the PDA market trends, it makes sense for PalmSource to switch its marketing and research and development focus to smartphones. Shipments of the advanced cellular phones are increasing rapidly at the expense of the PDA market, which has been slipping steadily, Kort said. In addition, smartphones have higher profit margins.
"(PalmSource) could fight a little harder, but it's probably smarter to let (market share) slip and put more of the resources on smartphones," Kort said.
RIM's Blackberry is expected to keep the PDA market growing through the first half of next year, Gartner said. In the second half, however, sales are expected to slow, and the overall market is forecast to post a decline for all of 2005.
PDA sales, however, are expected to eventually stabilize within a mature market that's becoming increasingly dependent on businesspeople. Companies are expected to account for 40 percent of sales this year, compared with 29 percent in 2003, according to Gartner.
While consumers can get enough of the PDA's capabilities in a cellular phone, business executives and sales people will prefer the PDA's larger screen for calling up business documents and email attachments while on the road, Kort said.
PalmOne, the largest user of the Palm OS, led the PDA hardware market, but continued to lose market share to other vendors as it too shifted focus to smartphones. PalmOne's share slipped to 26.2 percent from 34.3 percent a year ago.
No. 2 Hewlett-Packard Co. increased market share to 24.2 percent from 23 percent, followed by RIM, which posted a huge jump to 19.8 percent from 4.9 percent. Rounding out the top five were Dell Inc., 6.5 percent from 5.4 percent; and Symbol Technologies Inc., 2.2 percent from 2.9 percent.
Re:Article (Score:2)
Why the Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, Palm has tried more to generate cash than generate a strategy that makes their product diverse enough to work like an operating system, and not like an appliance with canned tasks.
I've watched them cut their market support to where essentially only Windows is supported. Not the best plan without something better to offer. It's the same battle that MP3 player makers have against Apple--they can't offer much better since they don't have a better online music interface to match the iPod's simple operation.
Re:Why the Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing that gets me is that if I had a Pocket PC, I know that virtually every CF or SD card (depending on which is available) will work with it, whereas Palms don't have that. All I can get is a memory card. Also, the only decent media application (the one that lets you compress things as much as is possible), is mmplayer, whereas with Pocket PC there have been several apps ported over.
Oh, and when my battery dies, I have to desolder it and solder another in. That really stinks.
Re:Why the Surprise? (Score:2)
Still, it would have been really, really nice of Palm to officially support Linux. I can actually run Palm Desktop under Crossover Wine, but of course Hotsync doesn't work and that kills it right there. JPilot's fine but I do miss the sl
No offense . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Business Practice (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Business Practice (Score:2)
Does MS still give away free Windowspowered PDA"s for first class passengers on international flights?
Hopefully this link works better. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, 1% may not seem like a big deal- (Score:2)
my opinions (Score:2, Insightful)
They were designed for intel processors, multitasking was a requirement, and various other design factors optimising them for "normal" computers.
PalmOS, however, is optimized for handhelds, doesn't do multitasking (I don't know about palm OS 5) simply because it's not neccesary on a PDA, and has one of the most intuitive interfaces i've seen. Also, PalmOS leaves me loads of
Re:my opinions (Score:5, Insightful)
Storage also is not an issue anymore, since flash memory prices have dropped so much it's like a $5 difference between including 64MB and 256MB.
If you're just looking for something to store contacts and text files, you can get a brand new Sharp YO-P20 Handheld Organizer for about $20. If you want a small, portable computer that will allow you to do most of your desktop functions quickly and relatively cheaply, buy an IPaQ or Dell Axim.
Getting a PDA only for storing contacts is WAY overkill.
Note: I'm a Dell Axim owner. There's just something cool about being able to be outside mowing the lawn while streaming mp3s over 802.11 to a small device in my pocket.
Re:my opinions (Score:2)
Palm 5 can multitask, though it's more primitive than on a PC. My device, at least (Tungsten E), is based on TI's OMAP chip, which has built-in multimedia functions and is designed specifically to have I/O processes that run at the same time as CPU processes.
I've listened to MP3s while reading.
On that note, I use my PDA almost exclusively for one thing: reading. I find that the resolution and sharpness are so good that it's
Re:my opinions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:my opinions (Score:2, Interesting)
It's no surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
They're still releasing devices with PalmOS 5 which is the saddest apology for an operating system I have seen. Writing PalmOS GUI code is hard - there are so many legacy features you need to check for and deal with. It's clear that the whole thing has just accreted without planning over the years. The current schizophrenia between 68000 and ARM is a nightmare with the worse endianness horrors you've ever seen. I won't even mention proper OS features like memory management, multi-threading and so on.
Customers have been begging for proper wireless support on Palms for a long time and Palm have failed to deliver. A device, today, without at least 802.11b, is a dinosaur before it's born. What the hell are the Palm engineers doing over there?
The software that delivers with the Palm is a little pathetic. Not even a file browser. And main memory has a completely flat file hierarchy so that even with a file browser it's hard to find what you want. No word processor (well, there's an awful 3rd party thing).
It's no surprise they're losing the war. But it needn't have been like this. They had the advantage. And they simply sat on their laurels.
Re:It's no surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in a troll sense but they laid off a good number of people after the
Now they need to improve the palm yet do not have hte resources to do so.
Netscape and wordperfect met the same fate when MS undersold them and had exclusive deals with OEM's. They had to cut the price and lay off the workforce. After that they no longer had the resources to improve their product.
Its sad but I think their lack of innovation that you mentioned shows how behind the times they are and how they are struggling.
Re:It's no surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's no surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would make sense that the the most popular "take with you" version of these would be on a PocketPC running Microsoft CE.
If Palm had wanted to remain on the top, they'd have had to offer *seamless* integration with these products, but how can they when they're competing with the company that MAKES them?
This is the a great example of how a monopoly can be used to extend into another market via a "one-off" mechanism.
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:2)
According to Documents-to-Go, who makes one of two major competing word processors for Palm (and the one bundled with the hardware), Pocket Word et al aren't up to snuff.
Got somone claiming differently?
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:2)
Out of the box, because of bundled apps, Palm has better Microsoft Office integration than Pocket PCs. Not MUCH better because Documents To Go and QuickOffice are not really desktop-style applications, but still.
It's 3rd party products like SpreadCE and our very own TextMaker and PlanMaker that make Pocket PCs much nicer platforms for working with Office documents.
We still ha
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, Pocket Word tends to screw up formatted tables, inline images, formatting, the like, while Docs to Go has repeatably demonstrated in the past that their product does not. Sames goes for things like Pocket Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Walt Mossberg had a great article on this a while ago. What's more, DTG practically comes with every Palm product nowadays.
While this may have changed in the most recent future (last I heard "Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003" still had this problem), I doubt 2005 greatly changed it. Now of course, perception is everything, and one might *think* PocketPCs would be better with office, but as we know perception is not always in line with reality.
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:2)
But my Tungsten C came with a version of Documents to Go (not the super duper latest, but usable enough for my purposes), making it effectively a non-cost addon when I purchased my Palm Pilot. It was included in the same box.
Granted they keep bugging me to register and purchase the latest, but so does any version of Quicken as well as many of the applications preloaded on PC's nowadays.
Re:Microsoft Office is killing palm... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, Microsoft Office and DTG do not support my documents in OpenOffice.org format, and they have absolutely no excuse not to.
Th
Linux is the future. (Score:5, Insightful)
- a keyboard
- an easy to use system
- unmetered email
Ie. it tries to serve customers instead of thinking about milking them dry. Not that it's not they long term goal (maybe) but they provide a decent service for a decent fee.
But that's just a functionnality-based success. Any WinCE, Palm or Zaurus call plan which would offer the same functionnality would quickly become as big. Time to think about new functions too - say unmetered instant messenging (like SMS but free!)
Note to cell phone operators : stop thinking about milking your customers dry. Start thinking about offering services, such as voip roaming (ie if my cellphone finds a wifi network, use sipphone instead of $lousy_gsm_provider - especially when roaming abroad !)
This is IMHO the key to success. Then whatever hardware or operating system that goes along, if it is not too lousy, will grow.
The Zaurus 6000 [externe.net] could have become big. The user interface needed only minor tweaking. If only it had had GSM built it (smartphone like) + some good voip software + a call plan where email and instant messenging would have been free...
The market is lagging not because of lack of functionnality or technical capabiliies (GPRS makes possible to receive calls at the same time you have a data connection on a multiplex-capable GSM phone) but only because a shared monopoly between shitty operators prevent this innovation from appearing. "what if it eats my profits?" is wrong spririt. With the same mentality horseless carriage ie cars would have never existed. "it will eat every competitor alive and grow my market share and thus skyrocket my profits" is right.
Where's entrepreunership and risk taking? I just see deep-coma business !
That's free advice from a disgruntled french cellphone customer.
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
- a keyboard
- an easy to use system
- unmetered email
I'll add a third point. Rim has a great SDK available for free. Code in Java or C++, they give you an emulator to test your app, and make it a fairly trivial process to upload it to the blackberry. WinCe grew because they added decent dev tools (vb and c++), emulator, and made it easy to upload those to an ipaq. Non of the bloody phones I've worked with will let you upload anythi
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
Even on the zaurus, creating and cross compiling opie applications is not as simple as it should be
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
- a keyboard
- an easy to use system
- unmetered email
Yes, I don't get why PDAs keep coming out without a keyboard. It makes them worthless.
The Blackberry does email better than anything out there. It's exactly how you would want it to work. I don't get why no one else does this. My company has about 30 Blackberries for various employees. We run the BB server, it hooks into Exchange, and it's like having a live client to the Ex
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
Many professionals have them. I'm a student at the University of Waterloo which is located right beside Research in Motion, and there are a lot of students here that want them as well from seeing RIM co-op students walking around with their blackberries.
Simplicity works, PDA makers don't need to throw useless and redundant featur
Re:Linux is the future. (Score:2)
Regarding the new ipaq with the voip feature + gsm, ok that's cool, but 1) it's not free software and 2) it's not all in one.
By all in one I mean the hardware should come with the sipphone account and an appropriate call/data plan to do all that without having to shop around for parts
Not at all surprising (Score:2)
Personally I'm happy with my old Palm 5. The battery lasts for ever and it does exactly what it needs to do very well. But I guess the market wants features.
Linux has a loooong way to go here.
Re:Not at all surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the problem is the market is already saturated with Palm's that do exactly what their owners need to do? I mean, why would you buy a new palm if it has the same features you already have?
The advantage Microsoft has is that PocketPC hardware has followed Moore's law, and thus there is an insentive for consumers to keep purchasing new devices. By the same token, Moore's law has reduced the cost of the hardware (and end product) for Palms (the low end models) to s
market crashers (Score:2, Interesting)
A drop of 53% in Linux market share is hardly "slight". A forced retreat is hardly the "discretion" exercised as "the better part of valor". Linux and PalmOS smartphones have an advantage in ease of development and app market momentum. We developers have to counter the Microsoft monopoly advantage in marketing to an American public that expects less from our phones than we do from our watches. Otherwise the nightmare of spam, cracks and
Did anyone expect less? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good - PDAs that work in secured environments. (Score:2)
serious problem with this article (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:serious problem with this article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:serious problem with this article (Score:3, Insightful)
Very different when smartphones, Symbian included (Score:4, Insightful)
"2003 was a breakout year for mobile operating system vendor Symbian Software, which shipped 6.67 million operating systems worldwide--an 88 percent market share of advanced OS-based handset sales. Before 2003, the Symbian OS was resident on only five handset models--all but one from Nokia. At the end of 2003, the number of Symbianbased handsets remained modest, at 11 models from four vendors, with five more scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2004."
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.as
http://www.mobilemonday.net/mm/story.php?id=388
Treo is the Reason (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Treo is the Reason (Score:2)
Splitting "PDA" and "Smartphone" is daft... (Score:2)
True, the "Pocket PC Phone Edition" is also left out... but I've used one of those and can't believe they've got any significant market share. The mismatch between the OS/GUI and what a phone needs is unreal.
Re:Treo is the Reason (Score:2)
Re:Treo is the Reason (Score:2)
Palm did it to themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
All Microsoft had to do is show up to the party. WinCE isn't a great operating system, but it's a lot better than PalmOS. The thing that has been holding PocketPC back is its awful UI.
My hope would be that PalmOne (the hardware part of Palm) explores some new ideas: Symbian is a great system they could ship right away, or they could adopt one of the Linux-based PDA environments and port a PalmOS emulation layer to that to run all the Palm legacy applications.
Marketing lies successful (Score:2)
So the market is converging, and saying that someone has a larger or smaller share of part of it is meaningless.
Are PalmOS sales as a whole up? Are WinCE sales up? Which is up more?
I still just want a Linux matchbox I can use to run nmap or ssh. It should have a VGA port, 2 USB ports, and built-in wifi.
I switched from a Palm to an iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I switched from a Palm to an iPod (Score:2)
Re:I switched from a Palm to an iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
They deserve it (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux PDA (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem is that the companies that make them sell them for too much! If they made them more affordable it wouldnt be 0.09%.
I have an old palm III.. can't justify spending over $300 on a new pda.
Hey Zaurus and other linux pda makers.. Make them more affordable and we'll buy them!
Anyone know where to get linux based pda's cheap?
JD
Not quite the end yet (Score:4, Insightful)
"A decline in Palm OS shipments was expected in the third quarter of 2004, but not of this magnitude," Mr. Kort said. "The company is pouring the vast majority of its resources into its smartphone business. A reduction in the number of PDA models palmOne offers is expected in 2005."
Most certainly bad for Palm, but not quite a deathknell. Another two aspects of trickery in this report: this only includes numbers of units *shipped,* not numbers of units *sold.* There is indeed a difference. I'm sure that PalmOne sold less devices in this quarter, but I'm pretty sure these numbers don't include much in the way of the new T5 (meaning it's likely people were still waiting to see what new stuff Palm would have) and who's to say that there isn't a backlog of iPaqs sitting in some warehouse somewhere, waiting to be sold?
Link to another article with the same numbers: http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7
No surprise (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, four years ago the Palm was a pretty nice deal. It handled a number of essential functions well, did it better than paper, and synced with your PC.
At the time it was the market leader for a reason.
Trouble is I keep looking at all of the things which reasonably should have evolved or been added and all that I see are the things that are missing, and the software that hasn't particularly improved in four years.
All things being equal, the mid range Palm feels like it should be a $49 retail item, if that.
Re:No surprise (Score:2)
I'd also like to note that a PDA is NOT a pocket PC( general term for s
Talk about misinformed (Score:2)
Palm doesn't even exist. You might as well say Palm Pilots.
There's TWO companies now. PalmSource and pa1m0ne. pa1m0ne is STILL THE #1 SELLER OF PDAS. The OS market share has been lost but that's because of Sony dropping out of the market.
So PalmSource is #2 and pa1m0ne is STILL #1.
Pocket PC for mapping/navigation software... (Score:2)
Forget handheld GPS units, and their tiny little screens. Forget big-screen chart plotters, and their multi-thousand dollar price tags. Get a Pocket PC from your favorite maker, a GPS add-on, some nav software, and be sailing the high seas for $500. Or driving the roads, or flying the now-friendly skies. Pocket PC navigation software rocks.
In fact, Microsoft Streets was one of the killer apps making Pocket PC so popular in the first place.
Re:Pocket PC for mapping/navigation software... (Score:2)
http://www.garmin.com/products/iQue3600/
Re:Pocket PC for mapping/navigation software... (Score:2)
What's Palm doing on this front? NOTHING!
Palm made an announcement last year when the Bluetooth based Navman was released for the Palm.
Too late, and relatively sucky... (Score:2)
Samsung i600 w/Verizon vs. Blackberry 7750 (Score:3, Informative)
These things (i600s) simply do not work as advertised. Verizon is lying on their page that says product info. For instance, they claim 240 hours of standby battery time with the default battery. Now, Windows 2003 upgrade has doubled battery performance, where I can almost get 1 full day (24 hours) STANDBY time on my i600 with the normal battery, this is with 0 use. They do include a double size battery that you can actually use for 1 morning-night period of normal use, but heavy use? forget it with these. One of the people at work had one and went hunting, kept the extended battery connected but the phone OFF for the friday night-sunday afternoon time frame, and the battery was DEAD when he got back. So, if you used BOTH batterys, and the phone was OFF the entire time, you would NOT get the 240 hours "STANDBY" time that Verizon claims on their page.
Next problem is basically a BSOD on these things, The same guy who took his hunting just got his replaced with a brand new one from Samsung because he couldn't make calls. Now he can't RECEIVE calls. If you call his phone it crashes. The interior display goes black, and the exterior LCD says "missed call".. We had 11 of these phones, and every single one was junk, was quirky, did NOT perform anywhere near as advertised.
The data sync.. forget about it. One day you get emails with only a 20-30 minute delay, next day no emails come to your phone, next day you get duplicates of the same emails you got the first day, but still none from the second day...
Anyways, I'll wait for the class action, in the meantime, DO NOT BUY Samsung i600's with Windows on them, they are total garbage...
Oh, if you want to ignore me, I still have 9 of them for sale $300 each, gently used.
My i600 works better than yours.. (Score:2)
That being said, I can't really recommend the phone. The main reason to get the phone is full internet/HTML support. This is a great feature! However, its not easy to rationalize the price for the service given how slow it is. It is almost always faster just to call someone and get the info you need rather than wait for the interent to kick in.
For example, you can g
Still #1 in an important demographic (Score:4, Funny)
For many Slashdotters, the palm is still their one and only.
Here are the reasons: (Score:2)
2. Handspring/PalmOne's slow roll out of the Treo 650 and it's lack of 3G or WiFi support (unlike WiFi capability of many Pocket PC devices) means Treo 650 is what is should have been a year ago.
3. Poor marketing and reliability issues with European Treos has giv
One major point (Score:2)
1. They are counting ALL WinCE devices, including Palmtop computers.
2. PalmOne was still the #1 seller for the quarter (but when you add up all other PPC makers, they did outdo PalmOne, which is why PPC outsold PalmOS, despite PalmOne being #1)
3. The PalmOS still has greater marketshare when you count total units out there now.
I think it's a crying shame for the Palm community that almost a YEAR AGO, PalmSource made PalmOS 6 (C
So... (Score:2)
Re: You've got to be kidding me... (Score:2)
To suggest that PocketPCs are intrinsically superior to equivalent Palm models is hilarious.
I concur with this statement. I currently have an iPAQ 2210 but my previous 3 handhelds were Palms. I've found the iPAQ takes approximately twice as many taps to achieve the same result.
The Pocket PC interface is clunky, as if the "designers" (if you can call a bunch of guys with a set of crayons that) tried to cram the best of Windows into a handheld device and in so doing approximate the competition, rather
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:2)
It was stagnation due to a change in leadership. Back when palm was #1, they brought in a guy from Pepsi to be their CEO. All he did was focus on marketing and promoting the brand. That is how you sell sugar-water, after all. They did no real R&D and made no major advance
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:2)
I think it was from the stagnation of palm.
It strikes me that there is some significant parallel between the Palm platform's history and the early UNIX wars (SysV, BSD, Ultrix, etc.). The parts of the Palm platform, and its most creative players, went through quite a bit of turmoil, what with aquisitions, break-ups, spin-outs and such. All of these events must have been a major distraction while Microsoft just plowed along and poured in money.
When Microsoft came out with their os for mobile devices p
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:4, Interesting)
the =zaurus line is far from a failure, it still makes the newest PocketPC machine look like a joke.
Sharp made the decision that the american public are not smart enough to handle their Zaurus and therefore only sell it in Japan where it is a raging hit.
Before you moderators start frothing and aiming for that overrated and flamebait button, this is a known fact with all products designed in Japan. Many MANY products never get here because they are convinced that the product is too difficult for an american to use/play/own.
The BEST vcr I ever owned is a Minidv/DVCAM/SVHS combo from SONY that you have to either buy in jap[an or have a friend ship to you, and youy can not find any information about outside Japan.
If the Zaurus line, expically the clamshell designs were sold here and actively marketed they would sell very well.... IF they were dumbed down a bit.
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:2, Informative)
As a two-time Palm buyer, I certainly agree with many of the comments on the thread about Palm not working hard enough to keep up. But the last time I owned a product that MS targeted (RealPlayer Plus - still have my version 4.0 CD), the vendor retailated by trying to milk me as a loyal user - charging an annual fee in order to get continual access to their "new improved" product releases, as they attemp
Re:Legal attacks soon? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This begs the question: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Symbian not Included (Score:2)
there are a few MS phones in the USA, but i am not sure how popular they are overall.
Re:Obligatory Psion Post (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Obligatory Psion Post (Score:3, Informative)
If you want Symbian get a Nokia phone.
Re:Time to port ReactOS to SH4/MIPS/Xscale (Score:2)