palmOne dementi: PalmSource not with PPC

[Colin Dunstan]

Thanks to Laurens for bringing some light into the confusion whether or not PalmSource plans to port PalmOS to PocketPC. C|Net reports:

PalmOne [PalmSource's biggest customer] representatives disputed the contents of the research note, from Needham & Co. The note said that PalmOne "tacitly admitted" it was working to make Microsoft's operating system available on the popular Treo line of phones...PalmOne representatives said the report was based on a misunderstanding, adding that the company is platform-agnostic. The representatives also said the company as a policy does not comment on products that may or may not be under development.

How interesting that PalmSource declines to commend on the report, and that palmOne is the one who tries to clean up the mess.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

How interesting that PalmSource declines to commend on the report, and that palmOne is the one who tries to clean up the mess.

Well, PalmSource never comments on its licensees' release plans. (If I were a licensee, I wouldn't be happy if they did.) The only tangible bit of info that has come out recently is that Samsung is developing a series of SmartPhones that use a mixture of OS5 and OS6. No word on what the projected release date is, though, but I wouldn't hold your breath for an OS6 SmartPhone:

It is not known at this time when the first handhelds running Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 will debut. PalmSource says the first smartphones with this operating system aren't likely to debut for another year.

Source: Brighthand (Sep 28, 2004)

As an aside: considering that the Treo 650 has not been rolled out yet, I wouldn't expect an OS6 SmartPhone from PalmOne any time soon either - at least not for the next half year. If there's going to be an OS6 device in the spring, it has to be a PDA from PalmOne. Seeing that PalmOne is shifting its focus to SmartPhones, I wouldn't count on that happening, though. Who knows? Maybe the T5 is just a stopgap product and PalmOne is, indeed, pouring its effort into a range of OS6 PDA's.

[hacker]

All of this is irrelevant, because Palmsource does not produce the Treo line of devices.

pa1mOne makes the Treo, and there is a very specific reason why they split from Palmsource... so they could entertain putting other OS versions on their hardware. Yes, their current devices use PalmOS, but there's no reason why they have to continue to do so.

The move to ARM was NOT to provide threading in the OS. That capability exists, and always has... but Palm's use of it is forbidden by license, not technology. Palm's license to the KADAK kernel used in PalmOS only allows them to expose one thread to the OS itself. This was a bad choice on their part back in 1996, when they started to use KADAK as their kernel.

Moving to ARM devices allows pa1mOne to provide faster processors and other additional capabilities to court the ability to put alternate OS versions on the hardware.

In a cut-throat market where Microsoft's portable OS (in various versions) controls a good 50% or more of the handheld devices in customer hands, it makes sense for pa1mOne to offer their hardware with the Microsoft OS as a possible option. There is absolutely nothing preventing them from putting Symbian, Microsoft, Linux, FreeBSD, PalmOS, or anything else they want on the devices, if it makes financial and technical sense to do so.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by hacker

pa1mOne makes the Treo, and there is a very specific reason why they split from Palmsource... so they could entertain putting other OS versions on their hardware. Yes, their current devices use PalmOS, but there's no reason why they have to continue to do so.

IIRC, the reason for the split was to resolve the conflict of interest that arose from being both the developer of the OS that it licensed to third parties and a hardware manufacturer itself that competed with those third parties. (Back then, Sony was still in the game and there was also Handera.)

I think it would be unwise from a marketing standpoint if PalmOne released a non-PalmOS device. PalmOne is pretty much equated with PalmOS and many people refer to their device as a "Palm". If they, for instance, released a WinCE device they would just be one of many, competing with the likes of Dell and HP and also the cheaper brands such as Asus, Qtek, Mitac, whatnot. PalmOS is what makes their brand unique as they are the only major licensee left (at least in the US and Europe).

[Laurens]

PalmOne ponders Microsoft, Linux options (CNet News)

Handheld-computer maker PalmOne is considering moves that would take it beyond the operating system that helped make the company a household name.

The Milpitas, Calif.-based firm has evaluated both Microsoft-based operating systems as well as at least one version of Linux as a potential alternative operating system to the Palm OS for its handheld devices, CNET News.com has learned.

Sources familiar with the tests said PalmOne has been quietly exploring operating systems to augment the Palm OS for some time. The company has also been exploring partnerships that could let it use a tailored version of the Linux OS to run on its devices, according to a source familiar with the company's efforts.

Looks I was completely off the mark earlier. Using Linux would definitely make sense from a business perspective.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by Laurens

Looks I was completely off the mark earlier. Using Linux would definitely make sense from a business perspective.

I hope they can succeed where every single other Linux-based handheld device has failed over the last 5 years.

There is currently no OS that has the simplicity, structure and syncronization capabilities of PalmOS in the Linux environment, so they'll have to recreate something from scratch, or make some serious modifications to something that might be close.

Whatever they create will most-likely not be licensed under a Free Software or Open Source license also, which might severely limit adoption and third-party support on that offering.

Unless whatever Linux-based handheld they can come up with (assuming they do) has the ability to sync directly to existing PalmOS handhelds and Palm desktops (both the Linux Palm Desktop flavors and the Windows Palm Desktop components), then it will fail.

This is something I've always found a bit odd... the are over 100 Linux-based handheld devices on the market, and every single one of them that is sold commercially, ships with software to syncronize to Windows, but almost none of them ship with software to syncronize to Linux itself.

If a user of a PalmOS handheld can't migrate from one to the other, transparently, without losing any of his data or data references, then the whole thing is irrelevant.

I can speak directly to this issue with authority, because most of my daily "paid" work is centered around embedded Linux on portable and mobile devices, and I also maintain the defacto software package that is used to syncronize PalmOS handhelds in Linux, FreeBSD, and other POSIX platforms (in fact, we support more PalmOS handhelds than pa1mOne, Palm, Sony, and all others combined).

Just because it can run Linux, doesn't always mean it should run Linux. There are reasons for, and against each side of that argument.

[Laurens]

News - Treo 650 delayed till February, won't have "Cobalt" even next year? (NewsWireless.net) (via Brighthand)

Frankly, we're keeping that to ourselves as competitive information," said Colligan. Nobody knows when we'll start the shift to Cobalt, OS 6, or on which devices. For now, we're saying that we've built the functionality we need into the Treo and the Tungsten T5 and there's no need to confuse developers by switching. I'm not even prepared to commit us to a change next year, or the year after, at this stage."