Extended Essay

The Future of Palm OS

In the third quarter of 2004, the sales figures of Microsoft's Pocket PC based devices, for the first time, overtook that of PalmSource's Palm OS based devices. Why has this happened? Let's take a look.

Palm OS was created back in the mid-1990s by Jeff Hawkins. It was the first widely popular PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) operating system. The Pilot1000 was the first Palm OS based device. It runs Palm OS 1.0. But it wasn't until PalmIII was released that made Palm OS the most favourable operating system on PDAs.

Seeing the success Palm OS has, Microsoft decided it would start its PDA business. It launched Windows CE, which stands for Consumer Electronics. The first few versions were a joke, but eventually it developed into a strong operating system, and, in some ways better than Palm OS. Windows CE devices, now called Pocket PCs, are traditionally better at multimedia, while Palms are best known for their simplicity, especially in PIM (Personal Information Management). Palm OS��s capabilities have improved a lot since the first release.

The report from analyst group IDC last February states than 2004 is the forth successive quarter of a year-over-year decline in the PDA market. pa1mOne, which has 42% market share in forth quarter of 2004, has an 11.1% decrease in shipments. The second largest vendor, Hewlett-Packard, has a market share of 27.5%, with also a 10.7% decrease in shipments. One of the reasons is the relatively new category of handheld computing �V the PDA Phone and the Smartphone.

At the Palm Mobile Solution Conference 2005 held in Hong Kong last June, a few speakers have stated that by the year of 2007 the sales of Smartphones would exceed the sales of traditional PDAs. A study from analyst group Gartner also forecasts a sale of one billion mobile phone units (which includes PDA Phones and Smartphones) in the year of 2009. The rapid development in 2.5G (GPRS), 2.75G (EDGE) and 3G standards, and also Bluetooth and WiFi allows us to have more affordable access to data and the internet via the mobile phone networks. Therefore, the future of the PDA market would not just be a continued development of the traditional PDA functionalities, e.g. PIM (Personal Information Management), multimedia, gaming, but also a convergence into the PDA Phone/Smartphone market.

Palm OS has a very successful family of PDA Phones, known as Treo. The latest model, Treo650, is one of the best selling Palm OS devices, with a market share of over 30%. Palm��s senior officers have, in various events, said that PDA Phones are what Palm is going to be focusing on.

Another two other major player exists in this market �V Symbian and RIM (Research In Motion). Here I must first explain the differences between a PDA phone and a Smartphone. A PDA phone is a PDA with phone capabilities and functions. An example would be pa1mOne's Palm OS based Treo650, O2��s Windows Mobile based Xda iis or SonyEricsson��s Symbian UIQ based P910i. A Smartphone is a phone with relatively advanced functions, e.g. some basic PIM system. An example would be GSL's Palm OS based M98, Motorola��s Windows Mobile based MPx220, or Nokia��s Symbian Series60 based 6600. RIM��s Blackberry devices are hugely popular to corporate users who would like to access corporate emails behind firewalls. It was a black horse in 2004, where its market share rose from 6.4% in 2003 to 18.6% in 2004, a 236.6% growth, making it the third largest PDA operating system player.

Another market that Palm would focus on is the Portable Media Centre. This is a market which is newly developed, and currently Microsoft is pushing its PMP (Portable Media Player). The selling point of the Palm OS PMPs is the additional PDA functionalities and wireless connections. The LifeDrive released in the second quarter of 2005 is the first Palm OS device that has a built-in 4GB hard disk, and the first Palm-branded device to have dual wireless connections (Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11g WiFi). Previously Sony��s Clie UX-50 already have dual wireless connection, but the battery life is not enough.

This is also very important for Palm to stay within the game. Although this is not the first PDA with a built-in hard disk, this is the first one aimed at the consumer market (the first PDA with a built-in hard disk is Sharp��s Zaurus SL-C3000, which is Linux-based, aimed at computer enthusiasts). The traditional PDA market is saturated and declining, and new ideas, directions and market has to be created in order to continue to grow with other strong competitors, e.g. the above mentioned Microsoft Pocket PCs, Microsoft Smartphones, Symbian-based Smartphones, and Linux-based PDAs.
I think if Palm OS continues with the current trend, it would definitely loose to Microsoft. To prevent this from happening, PalmSource should stop the current licensees from leaving, and encourage them to develop more devices. Sony was once a Palm OS licensee, and so was Tapwave. Sony last year decided to stop all production of Cli?s, and Tapwave just closed down. Samsung is a licensee, who has released quite a few phones, but none of them are widely available in the market.

Some Palm enthusiasts have been waiting for Palm OS Cobalt (6.x) to be released. In reality, 6.0 has already been released at December 29, 2003, and then discontinued. Palm OS Cobalt's latest version is 6.1, with some new standardization in old features, and adding Simplified Chinese support. The major difference is that it supports native VGA resolutions (640x480 and 480x640). In fact, Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 was released shortly afterwards Microsoft announced and released their VGA support. Given Palm OS Cobalt had BeOS inside its kernel, and BeOS��s engineers helping, supporting native VGA in 6.0 should not have been a problem.

There were rumours that Palm OS Cobalt has been discontinued and all resources have been moved to developing Linux. In fact, Cobalt has never been discontinued. The release of Cobalt 6.1 proves that, and the first Palm OS Cobalt device was shown at the PalmSource Developers�� Conference in May 2005. It is a Smartphone by Oswin, a Singapore subsidiary company of the Hong-Kong based Group Sense Limited (GSL). Porting to Linux does not mean it is the end of Palm OS Cobalt, but, rather another way out for Palm OS. The acquisition of the NanJing based software company, China MobileSoft (CMS), is for implementing Palm OS on top of Linux. CMS has plenty of experience in developing software for mobile phones, and have also been developing a version of Linux optimised for mobile devices. This enables PalmSource to develop more software for PDA Phones, and more importantly, increasing the attractiveness of Palm OS. Currently a hardware developer has to do low level re-designing and programming in order to get Palm OS to run on their devices, but actually a lot of these are designed and built to run a Linux-based OS. By providing a PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment, an application environment that is equivalent to Palm OS 4.1) on top of Linux, it shortens development and deployment time, and also lowers the cost for licensees with their already developed hardware. Not to mention the huge enthusiast base of Linux, which would bring improvements for free, all over the world, thanks to the open-source nature of the operating system. Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS Garnet would still be provided and supported in the foreseeable future, and judging from feedback from its licensees, PalmSource will decide if it will continue the development of a new native Palm OS. However, it gave many impressions that it is almost entirely focused on Palm OS for Linux. Already Palm is preparing for Linux development. Recently Palm has been recruiting Linux software engineers.

In the near future, I think Palm OS Garnet would still be the most widely availably Palm OS on the market. At least one of PalmSource��s licensee will release a Palm OS Cobalt device as a flagship model when the first Windows Mobile 2005 device is available. I don��t think Palm OS Cobalt devices would be available before Windows Mobile 2005 is released because the Palm OS side isn��t in the position to be attacked by Microsoft with its Windows Mobile 2005, and releasing it before Windows Mobile 2005 means than Microsoft would aim at Palm OS Cobalt��s weaker spots and attack. A dual wireless device has to be released as well, without a hard disk drive. This is a device configuration that Pocket PCs have for two years, and I think this is one of the minor reasons that Palm OS��s market share is dropping. Something like a Tungsten T|5 with WiFi would do. A low-end device with Bluetooth should also be released, something like an upgrade of Palm��s Zire 31. To attract corporate users, there is already software for connecting to RIM��s Blackberry protocol. This should be bundled with the Treo family, since the Treos all have built-in keyboards. A new Treo should also be released. Corporate emails can be accessed using data connections of the mobile phone network. An equivalent of an upgrade of Palm��s Tungsten|C should also be released. This device has WiFi built-in, and VoIP (Voice-over-IP) capabilities, also aimed at corporate users, for use in offices.

Reference:

Websites:
PalmInfoCenter (http://www.palminfocenter.com)
Brighthand (http://www.brighthand.com)
Writing on your Palm (http://www.writingonyourpalm.net)
PDA User Message Board (http://www.pumb.org)
http://www.snarc.net/

Special Thanks:
Mr Theo Poon