I’ve been a loyal Palm user for over 7 years now, with thousands of dollars invested in various devices and accessories. I use a Palm Treo 650 smartphone, which I believe is the best single available smartphone (PDA + mobile phone) available in the market. And as much as I like to support the underdog, it seems more and more that Symbian and Microsoft are set to win the smartphone wars.

Traditionally, Microsoft has never been known as an innovator. They do, however, follow-through aggressively. And they usually get it right at the 3rd or 4th version of everything they do. Witness Windows 3.1, Windows 98, Internet Explorer 3, and now Windows Mobile 5.

What strikes me as amazing is that these days, while Microsoft is still a monolithic entity, its divisions are acting like startups. Start.com is a great example, of good work being done in very small teams. Windows Mobile 5 is also a great example. And Microsoft is no longer keeping quiet about their latest developments in R & D.

Much of the credit should be attributed to Robert Scoble and the Channel 9 team at MSDN. They do lots of interviews, podcasts, and video interviews with people who are working on exciting things in Microsoft. I’m frequently struck by the dedication and passion shown especially by the Windows Mobile team. The things that they are doing right now are truly amazing.

Where does that leave Palm? Amidst the various changes, separations and mergers within the Palm family of companies, customers do feel left out. Back when Palm had only one or two models of PDAs a year, they still held the pole position as innovator. There’s a lot still to be said about the simplicity of the “Zen of Palm”. But if you look at any of Palm’s current offerings (other than the bare-basics Zire21 and Ziere31), they are no longer such simple PDAs. If Palm is in the business of making full-fledged multimedia devices, why shouldn’t it make the best of the class?

One of the things that I’ve always associated with the Palm platform is the wealth of software available. This, too, is changing. In a world dominated by Nokia and Symbian, Palm is a distant second or third as platform of choice for developers. Some of that is blamed on Palm’s lack of openness – for example, both the Treo 600 and Treo 650 are not supported by the excellent semapedia and semacode projects, the reason being “no camera access provided by manufacturer.”

These days, I look at Symbian and Windows Mobile phones and seriously envy the functionality, the available choice of hardware and software, and the future of the smartphone.

I believe the period beginning this fall, and next spring is very critical to the continued success of Palm. Faced with serious contenders such as the Nokia N90, HP iPaq 6515 and the HTC Universal, I hope the Palm Treo 670 is not all we have to look forward to.

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Filed under: Mobile World

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