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11/13/2005: "A Tale of Two PDA Manufacturers"

Remember Psion, the innovative British handheld device manufacturer? They built class leading handheld devices with an operating system (EPOC) well in advance of their nearest competitors, Palm. Then they decided to spin off their operating system development into a separate company, Symbian, and continued to manufacture their devices. However, they could not compete against Palm in their most important market the US.

Remember Palm, the innovative American handheld device manufacturer? They built class leading handheld devices with an operating system (Palm) well in advance of their nearest competitors, Palm. Then they decided to spin off their operating system development into a separate company, almSource, and continued to manufacture their devices. However, they could not compete against Microsoft in their most important market the US.

Palm find themselves now at the same place that Psion were some five years ago and how they move forward will dictate how well they fare in the coming years. In the end Psion gave up manufacturing consumer devices and concentrated solely on the corporate market where they have carved out a good reputation. Palm, however, have chosen to go the other route and admit defeat realising that they cannot match the marketing muscle of Microsoft. The next generation of Treo's will come initially with an option of both Palm's own OS and Microsoft's PocketPC. I suspect that the majority sold will be with PPC and that it won't be long before the Palm OS is dropped entirely.

Whether this is enough to keep Palm afloat only time will tell but once again it is another indication that having the best technology doesn't necessarily mean that people will buy it. People want familiarity, something within their comfort zone and, by-and-large something not too taxing. Microsoft are able to capitalise on the IP that they already have within their Windows operating system offering something in a small form factor that people can relate to – Palm were not able to offer this with their own OS.

What this need for familiarity does mean is a loss of choice as while the range of devices may in the short term be the same the OS's will not. In fact if you discount BlackBerry Microsoft's PocketPC is now just about the only game in town.