|
|
 Mobile Windows News |  Podcasts |  Videos | Search | Forums | Site News |
|
Palm overtakes Microsoft: Microsoft drops to number 3 in smartphone market: after Symbian AND after Palm October 24, 2004 [General] | By Edward J. R. By "smartphone" most analysts usually mean both smartphones (without touch screen but with keypad) and PDA phones (with touch screen or with full QWERTY keyboard). While we, contrary to many other Windows Mobile websites, have been pointing out mitakes of Microsoft clearly - we always had Symbian (and the factor ruler of Symbian: Nokia) in mind as the main adversary of Microsoft powered cell phones. However now it appears that Microsoft's perfomance in the smartphone market is so lousy that even Palm OS powered smartphones are performing better! Maybe Microsoft should start listening to our critique... Here are the current market share numbers in smartphone market: Symbian: 87 percent. PalmSource (makers of Palm OS operating system): 7 percent. Microsoft: 4 percent. Please note also that RIM Blackberry devices are very strongly raising... and are considered by many also as "smartphones". On picture below you can see Albert Chu - Vice President for Business Development of PalmSource [a software provider for palmOne] - who is presenting especially to msmobiles.com, during our visit on the PalmSource yacht in southern France, some smartphones powered by Palm OS: 
By the way of various conferences (Switzerland, France, etc) we (i.e. msmobiles.ciom) have been meeting Albert Chu and Gabi Schindler (Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing) - both were (Gabi still is) members of PalmSource Executive Team. They were showing to us their smartphone plans and they also were pointing out that Microsoft's strategy to have 2 incompatible platforms (MS Smartphone and Pocket PC) is inferior to PalmSource's way - various platforms, yes, but application compatibility among platforms. Those PalmSource executives were nice to us (as a press members) but also humble and open to new solutions. Unfortunately we can't observe that in Microsoft, which seems to be complacent and self-indulgent, rather than listening to independent critique, like this one that we provide. Never mind Symbian. At this moment in time Microsoft has no chances to catch up with Symbian at all. Microsoft has to catch up with PalmSource first! On Monday next week (1-2 days from now - depending on your time zone) the new Treo 650 smartphone, powered by Palm OS, is being commercially launched and again Microsoft camp doesn't have clear answer to this model: although HTC Blue Angel (aka MDA III, XDA III, i-mate PDA2k, ...) also has built-in full-QWERTY keyboard as Treo 650 has, the Treo 650 however is much smaller and it has non-movable keyboard, not a slide-out one... Conclusions: although shipments of smartphones in coming years will be increasing a lot - it is a very big growth area in cell phone industry - Microsoft fails to convince end users and, as we were pointing it out many times in our stories, still keeps making unforgettable mistakes... to mention a few:
 Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 1 Comment ]
   |
| ||||||
| Mobile Windows News | Podcasts | Videos | Search | Forums | Site News |
