HP Makes a move on Palm

HP Makes a Move on Palm

Recently HP http://www.hp.com/ purchased Palm http://www.palm.com/  in a blockbuster deal.   This was a deal that was going to be done by someone once the sales numbers came out on Palms newest smartphones.  The shame is this did not have to be, at one time Palm was the leader in PDAs with the Palm Pilot, and later created the smart phone market with the Treo smartphone the first smart phone to have a camera, PDA, and also be a phone, hence Treo for 3 functions.   Palm stumbled because Hawkins and Dubinsky who helped developed the next generation of PDA, the Vizor after the Palm Pilot wanted to to do an IPO so they could compensated for creating the start up company HandSpring.  Instead Palm split the company into two parts, one part of the company did software for the Palm OS platfom for PDAs/Smartphones and tried to sell their software to other PDA/Smartphone companies.  The other part of the company focused on hardware, and when this did not work out Palm later put the two parts of the company together again.  While Palm went through at least 2 restructurings RIM came out with the Blackberry, Microsoft made partnerships with smartphone OEMs which killed Palm's efforts to sell their Palm OS to other smartphone OEMs and the invention of the Iphone was the nail in the coffin for Palm as an independent company.  The question now is will RIM, the maker of the Blackberry be eaten or scale up into the netbook market by acquring a small netbook/laptop OEM?  

The Blackberry has an installed strong base of users, however between the Iphone, Android, and Microsoft integrating their smartphones with their PCs (Android with Acer, Iphone with Imacs), and Microsoft with Windows 7, the pressure is on for RIM to scale up with the Blackbery or lose ground.  Nokia has already made a hardware move by partnering with Intel to create an open source platform for Nokia phones to compete with Android's open source model.   The Nokia and Intel open source platform is called Meego.   We will be back soon with a report on being a developer for the Windows 7 smartphone platform vs. being a developer for the Android smartphone platform.  

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Mr. Winston Shines is a Consultant for Maximillian Bryan & Marcell Technologies Internationale LLC, he has written for Baseline magazine http://www.baselinemag.com/, (to view the article click on http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/Ensuring-ITs-Survival-301220)  and has written the  copyrighted book Training Today's Youth for Tomorrow's Technology which is on sale at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/.  For more info go to http://www.mbmtinternationale.com/.