The End of PalmOS?

SLT writes "According to Engadget, PalmSource was purchased by Access, a Japanese cell phone software company known for their NetFront browser. What does this mean for the future of Palm?" More coverage at LinuxDevices and Reuters. From the Reuters article: "Japanese software developer Access Co. said on Friday it would make U.S. software developer PalmSource Inc. wholly owned in a 34.4 billion yen ($311.3 million) cash deal to strengthen its development of software for handheld devices. Access will pay cash to shareholders of PalmSource, which will be later absorbed by Access' U.S. unit Apollo Merger Sub Inc., Access said in a statement."

Witty 3com

[stecoop]

Most consumers thought 3Com was stupid for spinning off such a profitable business. What I recall is that it sold for 300 times earnings and a bunch of investing consultants warned of such a pricey model for such a small niche product. End result is usually the same with PE ratio being to high [yahoo.com]. The OS isn't really that important, they should make it free to run anywhere and try selling the hardware; yeah exactly opposite of what has been said by some big OS makers.

Treo 670 / asian language devices?

[bre_dnd]

It's a very puzzling development for me.

There's been speculation that the Treo 670 will not be running PalmOS anymore -- how does that fit in with this?

There are a few Korean, Japanese and Chinese producers of PalmOS devices, especially smartphones. The pen interface is more suitable for iconographic languages so it would make sense to keep a presence there. Where will this go from here?

Who is Access?

[ReformedExCon]

Well, if you've ever used cHTML, they are the ones who came up with it. Back in the early days of featurephones, NTT Docomo sent out a call for browser software, and Access was the only game in Tokyotown. Unfortunately, they didn't really support all of HTML, only a subset. But that subset was handled well and allowed the browser to display pages on the small cellphone screen without forcing the user to scroll horizontally.

So Access, riding Docomo's coattails, became the premier web browser company for cellphones in Japan. It's like how Gary Kildall was approached by IBM to sell his CP/M system, only in this case Access was able to capitalize on their position instead of losing out to a second-rate compiler company.

Now with PalmSource in their possession, they are strategically aligned to provide browser software, mail software, scheduling software, and a host of other useful PDA-like features in their cellphone software suite. Add to that that with greater cellphone power is bound to come greater demand for more feature-filled "smartphones" and they're in a great place with a ready-for-delivery PDA suite.

Why "The End of PalmOS"?

[anno1602]

Okay, so PalmSource, was acquired by Access, a company that is roughly in the same market as PalmSource (mobile devices) while not doing the same thing (OS vs. browser). It sounds like PalmSource would complement Access' offerings nicely, and actually, that is what Access is stating as its reason for the acquisition: PalmSource's OS and linux expertise. How do you get from there to the statement that Access will scrap PalmOS?

Re:Don't they own Be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now BeOS gets to be even more like Amiga; it's IP passed from one company to another, each more obscure and poorly funded than the last, each utterly failing to do anything with the assests they've secured for outrageous amounts. They've got two different companies claiming ownership of the OS, too!

It's all too earily familiar.

How does this kill PalmOS?

[amichalo]

Um, what kind of company would spend $311 million to buy PalmOS, then STOP SELLING THE TECHNOLOGY? Sure, they may eventually integrate the parts of PalmOS they like into "Access OS" or whatever they sell, but they are certainly not going to just exit the market that PalmOS serves.

When Maytag bought Whirlpool last month, it didn't mean they were ditching their product line. /. can be so reactionary.

Re:How does this kill PalmOS?

[Wordsmith]

What kind of a company would spend millions on BeOs, and then stop selling the technology?

They have an excellent PR opportunity.

[CyricZ]

They have a near perfect marketing opportunity right now. Indeed, it would be fantastic for them to release the source code to BeOS. Doing so could very well make Access a "household name" in the open source world. And considering the massive size of the OSS community these days, that can translate to vastly increased sales and recommendations.

I for one would be very inclined to financially support the company that provided us with the source code to BeOS, especially if under the BSD or MIT/X license.

Thank god

[Dr. Sp0ng]

PalmOS hasn't evolved in a meaningful way since it was launched. It still has no memory protection or multitasking, and the interface looks like something out of 1994. It either needs to be updated to modern computing standards, or die, and it looks like they're choosing die. Good riddance.

I've been a Palm user since the Palm III first came out, but I recently bought my first Windows Mobile device (a Dell Axim x50v), and I love it - I finally have a PDA capable of running modern applications on a (reasonably) modern OS.

Re:Th End of PalmOS?

[tzanger]

Is there a PPC device that lasts longer than about 8hrs on battery? My Tungsten E works a full week and a half with daily use (look at what's to do, look up contact numbers, scribble a note kind of work).

That's why I'm not leaving the platform. It's easy to work with, it works very well and the battery life is pretty damn good.

Re:Thank god

[Hast]

This is pretty much my experience as well. I got a Sony Clie UX50 (clamshell Palm with real qwerty keyboard) last summer. I was quite surprised to find that the Palm software culture was something of Win32 shareware "give me money!" on steroids.

On paper the device was really good. It can play MP3s and video (re-encoded naturally). It has built in WiFi (11b) and Bluetooth. And, as I stated, a real keyboard.

Problem is that the MP3 player was broken, in accordance to Palm standards (We don't need no steenkin' file system!) it couldn't handle folders. The movie player requires that files are in the magic folder with magic filenames. (The same is true for PSP btw, probably due to some power moran over at Sony.)

You could install some programs on it, but as I mentioned above everyone required payment for their crappy utilities. The FTP client I tried cost $15 and couldn't handle folders.

That's about when I gave up and realised that in order to get a working system I'd need to put a loooot of money into it.

It works fine as a WiFi WWW browser. And with fine I mean "As long as you don't need anything advanced". I would love to flash it with a basic Linux distro so I could actually put programs that worked on it instead.

Palm should have ditched their crappy OS many years ago and concentrated on GUI stuff. With Linux/BSD under the hood they may still have mattered today.

Re:Witty 3com

[VJ42]

I've got a Palm, I think PalmOS is great, it's got a clean and simple GUI that my 4 yr old cousin understands, and there are milions of freeware applications out there that run on it, everything from a colouring in program(for said cousin) to various media players that allow me to use my Palm as an mp3 player.

the future is the cell phone not PDA

[clustercrasher]

Before you get worked up about the CE threat. Ask yourself how many carry and phone and a PDA. If you had to choose one which would it be?

As devices get smaller, the PDA functions will migrate to the phone so look to phone manufacturers to set the trends.

Yes, this is the end

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

As the owner of a Treo 650, let me say, when I purchased the device, I pretty much knew that Palm OS was dead:

- PalmSource has halted development on Garnet (the version of Palm OS that the Treo runs)
- Palm's Treo 670 will probably run Windows Mobile

That said, I don't really care:
- My previous device, the Danger Hiptop2 / T-Mobile Sidekick II, was far less expandable and far less usable than my Treo is *today*, even assuming that Palm development ceases tomorrow
- I already have an SSH client, IRC client, web browser (two of them, actually), email client (with IMAP sync and IDLE support, even when the phone is off), MP3 player, Bejewled 2, and a lot more.

It does far more than the Sidekick ever could do or ever will do. As nice as the Sidekick is, it, like many smartphones, is a closed platform. I can't add features that aren't already there. With the Treo I can.

That said, Windows Mobile is a much better platform in many regards. The UI isn't as good, but it can multitask, has a real filesystem, has more web browser choices, and doesn't have stupid heap size limitations.

Re:They have an excellent PR opportunity.

[derteufel]

People seem to forget that there are parts of the BeOS source code that can not be released legally. At least not as is. It would take quite an effort to secure the agreements with other companies and/or re write the relevent portions from scratch.

Re:dang.

[Arimus]

The UI might have been nice but trying to write any useful apps on the Palm is a nightmare. No proper threading, no file system, stupid heap size limit, non-standard C libraries (Okay, M$ doesn't use standard libraries either but it doesn't make it impossible to use standard libraries).

Poor 3rd party support is going to be one of the things which will listed on the death certificate as probable cause of death alongside people wanting the same os on a PDA as their desktop.

Goodbye Palm, you had your day....