The decline and fall of the Palm empire
Palm used to dominate the market with the best gadget. What went wrong?
Mike Elgan over at Computerworld has written a great piece on Palm. I have to admit, I agree with a lot of what he writes. There was a time many moons ago that I refused to carry a Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device. I preferred the Palm OS for how speedy it was, and how easy it was to use. I poked fun at those few that actually dared carry the original version of Window CE, until HP released the first HP Jornada. It’s a great piece on “what went wrong”. Check it out when you get a few minutes.
“The once-mighty Palm Inc., still successful on paper from the momentum of past glories, is doomed to decline and failure. It wasn't always thus. Here's my preemptive postmortem.
About 12 years ago, I met with a man I didn't know, who worked for a start-up I was unfamiliar with, to see a product I'd never heard of.
The man was Ed Colligan. The start-up was Palm Computing (though it had recently been acquired by modem maker U.S. Robotics). And the product was code-named Touchdown, later to be branded the Palm Pilot.”