PalmSource Exclusive [Part 3]: Michael Mace (CCO) and John Cook (Dir Prd Mktg)

[Bob Russell]

MobileRead.com is very pleased to continue presentation of this exclusive interview with two of the key leaders at PalmSource… the Chief Competitive Officer, Michael Mace, and the Director of Product Marketing, John Cook, who were kind enough to sit down with me at the recent PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon 2005 in San Jose, CA to share their views on the direction and future of PalmOS.

The interview is being presented on MobileRead this week as a five-part series, and it continues today with the third installment, covering the competitive environment for mobile platforms and operating systems, and the key advantages of PalmOS.

MobileRead: Competition is heating up, of course, in the mobile space. It's a hot topic. And Microsoft just came out with Windows Mobile 5. They are continuing to upgrade their platform. But the PalmOS ecosystem remains strong. What do you see as the key advantages to building and buying devices with the PalmOS?

Michael Mace: Well, there are probably four...

I think first of all, flexibility, which goes in a couple of ways. We are much less restrictive than most other companies in terms of what we let licensees do. Things that we let them change in terms of form factors, screen sizes, stuff like that. To give you an example, Magneto nails support for square screens. However, it only supports 240x240 or 480x480, which is a little frustrating to the hardware companies because all the volume is in 320x320 and that's where the glass is inexpensive. Whereas, what we say is, "We need a screen." We kind of require a screen, and we don't require a lot more. We really don't care.

The devices need to pass a compatibility test in terms of running the apps and in terms of being able to exchange data. As long as they can do those two things, almost everything else is open to being altered. So we give a lot more flexibility which results in more diversity, more freedom of choice for customers, and makes the licensees more comfortable because it gives them more scope for innovating and not being commoditized, which they don't really like.

Flexibility also extends to the number of applications available. We have the largest base of third party apps and they virtually all run on all PalmOS devices. So there's none of this confusion of trying to figure out "do I have a Windows Mobile 2005 Smartphone edition, or do I have a Windows Mobile 2005 Pocket PC Phone edition?" which changes utterly the range of software applications that are available for the device. So users on PalmOS have a much easier time finding the software they need and customizing it for their particular needs.

Secondly, ease of use and user interface. Number of taps and things like that. I think we just do a better job of that than the other folks.

The third piece is data protection. In particular, every time we do a sync, we do a full backup of the internal memory of the device. We do that because we built this really nice database architecture where we can track what changed. So we can go and back up everything that has been altered. That isn't how synchronization works on the other platforms. Sync is something that coordinates the data files across certain selected applications. Backup is a separate function. Have you tried to do a backup? It's not the sort of thing you are going to do every time you put it in the cradle. In fact, most users are not even aware that they're not backing up when they do a sync. So what happens is they assume they are getting a full backup when they synchronize. And then the device goes dead, or they lose it or it breaks. And they find out that a bunch of their data hasn't been preserved and it's a very big deal.

And then fourth is compatibility. We work really, really hard to be standard agnostic and support all of these standards. So for instance, in email... we're working with RIM. Our licensees work with Exchange. We work with Exchange, we work with Good. We're not trying to force any particular email solution down everybody's throats, which makes the operators a lot more comfortable because different ones are pushing different types of email. We work with Office and Microsoft products. We work with Oracle, we work with SAP, we work with IBM. We are neutral in all of those things, so we are not viewed as someone who is trying to come in and force a particular agenda. So as a result we do a really good job on compatibility.

I'm really looking forward to getting a Magneto [Windows Mobile 5] device. I want to test the improvements that they've made to Pocket Word and Pocket Excel and see how that measures up against the PalmOS solution. Our early results look like there are still some pretty significant problems.

MR: How do licensing costs compare between, for example, Windows Mobile and PalmOS?

MM: Our license fees are negotiated individually with each licensee based on what they're asking us to do and what they're bringing to the table in terms of innovation. So we don't release that information. Microsoft doesn't release its fee schedule either. I know what Symbian's is. I have a feeling most of us are roughly in the same ballpark. What's going to be interesting is in the phone space (when we're starting to do more voice-oriented phones) we can get down to significantly lower price points. Especially, since we're doing a lot of that development in China. And that's an area where phone vendors are not comfortable paying $10 a copy, which is what you have to pay for Symbian, for a phone that they're going to be selling to 20 million users. They really don't like that idea, so I think with our Chinese operation, we can profitably get down to price points that are going to be very hard for a company that does its development in Sweden and London to match. But we'll see.

MR: Are device manufacturers and licensees generally price shoppers?

MM: Price matters to them a lot, but they also want to see the features and business relationship and flexibility that they need. They also are very anxious not to be caught in anybody's proprietary trap, which is why Linux is very attractive to many of the licensees.

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This interview will continue with the remaining installments…
..Part One
..Part Two
<Part Three>
..Part Four
..Part Five

Special Note: Please note that while we encourage a lively discussion of these topics, we require that the discussion remain polite and on-topic so the discussion can remain profitable for all. We will moderate heavily if necessary. Thank you!

[lindseydyson]

Again, this is great to read.

Lindsey Dyson
Deputy Editor PalmAddict
Personal Assistant to Sammual McLoughlin
Welcoming over 40,000 visitors a day to Palm Addict

[Pride Of Lions]

It'd be interesting to note how they allow different hardware licensees to customize the ir particular hardware. Does that topic enter the discussion at any point in this series, or would PalmSource be willing to answer at some later date?

I have a Tapwave Zodiac2 and it was confusing going "backwards" from the Palm Tungsten T|3's Palm OS 5.4 (or whatever) to the Tapwave Zodiac OS 5.2.7. It doesn't seem like there might be that big a difference between the OS's, but there is (not counting on how I had to rely on MarkSpace's Missing Sync (with it's extra $40) all of a sudden to get the Zodiac to sync with my Mac.)

Does PalmSource provide a basic OS to it's licensees that they can modify and tweak to taste, or are they actively customizing the OS per licensee? It seems the first is true because otherwise it might be easier to upgrade my Zodiac's OS to the most current and powerful.
POL9A

[Bob Russell]

That's a great question about hardware freedom. Mike may not be able to talk too much about how a specific hardware vendor does it, but it would be interesting get more examples and perspective in addition to the discussion on screen sizes.

Didn't we see in the past that there is a balancing act. The flexibility that allowed some features to come out earlier in devices like the Clie line from Sony also left some issues for application support down the line. But, personally, I'm really glad because it also propelled the whole Palm platform ahead light years!

I think the answer is for the hardware vendors to stay creative, but to provide additional information and support to developers for their particular devices to minimize the support issues. I really want features earlier, and I really don't want the devices to all look the same because of OS restrictions!

As far as Zodiac, didn't they put in some audio/video processing improvements special to Zodiac to support gaming? I doubt that they really changed much in the supplied OS from PalmSource (but that would be an interesting question also). More likely, I'd guess that they built new supplementary APIs for functionality and hardware support that just hadn't yet been released in whatever version of the OS the device was built on.

Another tradeoff, though, is probably that hardware vendors probably become very attached to their own customization and don't like to invest to revise it when it already works. (As we've seen, it's not so trivial to produce a bug-free device!)

I'm just speculating, but I wonder if that is one of the reasons Cobalt OS has not been adopted quicker. Not that there's a particular problem with Cobalt, but that PalmOne has a large investment in the tweaks and enhancements to Garnet specific to their devices, and so they may have been reluctant to abandon that investment to move forward to Cobalt right away when Garnet works just fine. PalmOne wisely wants to make the most of what they've done, both with regard to code and with regard to device form factors that work well.

One piece of supporting circumstantial evidence for that theory is that I talked to one group working on a Cobalt smartphone. They surprised me by telling me that Cobalt was actually easier for them to build a smartphone on than Garnet because it already did a lot of the work for them that they would have had to add to Garnet!

But remember that there's still time to follow-up this interview with more questions to Michael Mace at this thread at AllAboutPalm. I think it will end sometime next week, so don't wait too long! I hope you'll throw out some of these questions to him there.

[Antoine of MMM]

I'm just speculating, but I wonder if that is one of the reasons Cobalt OS has not been adopted quicker. Not that there's a particular problem with Cobalt, but that PalmOne has a large investment in the tweaks and enhancements to Garnet specific to their devices, and so they may have been reluctant to abandon that investment to move forward to Cobalt right away when Garnet works just fine. PalmOne wisely wants to make the most of what they've done, both with regard to code and with regard to device form factors that work well.

This is teh reason that palmOne gave and pretty much fits with what we have seen from the thus far.

One piece of supporting circumstantial evidence for that theory is that I talked to one group working on a Cobalt smartphone. They surprised me by telling me that Cobalt was actually easier for them to build a smartphone on than Garnet because it already did a lot of the work for them that they would have had to add to Garnet!

Not surprised there either. PS pulled a lot on what hadnt been done in Garnet to make things happen. Still would be nice to be using Cobalt on my T5 now though.