Palm needs Android? Do fish need water?
Fortune makes the suggestion that Palm should focus on Google's Android mobile operating platform, and then ZDNet follows with a question, "Should Palm drop their Linux plans and embrace Android?"
The answer is "Yes." An emphatic "Yes."
...[I]t may be time for a drastic change of strategy. If Android is all it's cracked up to be, Palm may be better off scrapping its OS plans, and throwing in with Google instead....
Certainly, Palm would be taking a risk by betting on Android. Any embrace of Google would bring the wrath of Microsoft, which could make it more difficult for Palm to produce its most profitable handsets, its Windows Mobile-based Treos.
It really doesn't matter if Android is "all it's cracked up to be." It also doesn't matter if Microsoft doesn't like it. Palm isn't exactly thriving with Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform (nor is Microsoft, for that matter). Palm is a walking corpse and needs to associate with living, breathing human beings again.
Android lets Palm bet big on the future. Windows Mobile is a bet on an operating system that has failed to make much of a dent on the market in its 10 years of struggling to do so. Palm was right to bet on Linux two years ago, but it has done little with the strategy. It's time to try its luck with Google. Android is no panacea, but it's better than popping Advil while its arms, legs, and neck get amputated by the market.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
What you have today is a company that abandoned its roots to grow only to find that it couldn't compete with the big dogs and is now smaller and weaker than ever. How is that smart?
I think he means that their distro of Linux is no where near that of google's. Personally, I have never liked windows mobile, yet I know that the market has not been super competitive. I look forward to android, and I think it can do more than windows would ever be able to do, and I think it will be the Iphone alternative. Offering a beautiful product like apple, but a different philosophy, which is opensource.
- by ChrisLang October 3, 2008 6:42 PM PDT
- I use a Windows phone because it integrates with Outlook easily. Enough said.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(7 Comments)What most have missed with Andoid is that it is going to integrate with the Google social network.
Also the browser runs JavaScript AND flash, something no other browser does well.
True OperaMini does run JavaScript, however it throws a out of memory error soon after and on every page you try to load from there on. But no flash.
So, have you seen Friend Connect soon on Blogger and in testing on 8 beta sites? Gee, the Anfroid browser runs JavaScript and not just JavaScript but AJAX, what Friend Connect needs to run on blogs.
Then, gee, what extremely popular site uses flash video, is social with friends lists? Do you see a pattern here? The android phone is going to give you Gtalk, a list of friends, not just contacts, BUT Internet friends that are on line. Wait till they add Geo Locating to the Android list and you can tell where your friends are at and go where they are. Think clubs. Think happy hour. Think events.
Does this make sense? Everything Google is doing right now is all part of this evil plan to take over the social network scene and has been for years. Why do you think they did not buy Digg?
Bottom line: I miss my Treo 650, do you remember no more than two clicks away? I do.
Chris Lang
http://www.keywebdata.com