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It is all over the news that Microsoft has a new friend. It was announced
that Palm will be releasing a version of their Treo device that will run the
Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system instead of the Palm OS. The Treo 700
is expected in early 2006.
It seems that once again Microsoft has managed to make a friend out of a
company that had been a key competitor.
Remember when Java was the leading development platform?
That was just before Microsoft and Sun became friends. Now .NET is pegged as
the leading platform being used by enterprises. It will be interesting to see if
the new friendship with Palm and the release of the new Treo in early 2006 will
be the beginning of Microsoft advancing in the enterprise PDA space as
well.
Time will tell.
In the meantime, the announcement is still blazing hot, fresh from the
presses and yet there are already follow-up announcements by other companies.
For instance, CommonTime announced today that it is committed to porting Lotus
Notes functionality to the new Palm Treo that will run Microsoft. Windows
Mobile.. CommonTime has an mSuite solution that delivers wireless pushed Lotus
Notes email and PIM, mobile Lotus Instant Messaging, device management, AES
end-to-end encryption, on-device security, remote kill functionality and more.
Info-Tech Research (www.infotech.com) announced today that “a
Windows-based smartphone marks the beginning of the end of the Palm OS
platform.”
Carmi Levy, Senior Research Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, stated
“When viewed in conjunction with the sale of PalmSource earlier this month,
it’s an acceleration in the demise of the Palm OS platform and final
confirmation that its once-dominant position in the broader handheld market is
gone for good.“
With Palm being allowed to customize some of the Windows Mobile features and
with Microsoft getting attached to a slick device, the odds are in favor of this
becoming a very popular device. With the ability to easily connect with Outlook
and get email as well as operating as a standard PDA and phone, this device is
destined to be the choice of enterprise users.
For more on the Treo Smartphone 700, you can check out the Microsoft press
release at:
http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,1x2f,1,l905,g20x,jorm,i5r0
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