Palm (company) / Hardware manufacturer

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The company Palm Inc. at present (2005) market leader is in the range of the PDAs (personnel digitally Assistant).

Firm history

The beginnings

The company Palm was created 1992 by Jeff Hawkins, OD Colligan and Donna Dubinsky, the capital for the establishment of this company came among other things from Tandy. The company won gradually beside Tandy further partners, like Casio, GeoWorks or AOL. 1993 presented Palm, briefly after conception Newton von Apple, with the Zoomer their first product. The Zoomer was a flop on the again developing PDA market and the partners of Palm lost the interest. By the failure of the Zoomer and the development of a successor into financial difficulties turned out, Palm was taken over 1996 by US Robotics for 44 million US Dollar and could, since now again capital was present, still in the April of the same yearly the "pilot" on the market bring. In March 1997 bought 3Com US Robotics for 7.8 billion US Dollar and concomitantly Palm. Starting from December 1997 it was also possible for different companies to lizenzieren PalmOS. In March 2000 the Palm became, Inc. at the stock exchange listed. Since August 2003 the hardware department of Palm palmOne was called. The software department, which had developed the PalmOS operating system, was paged out into an independent company named PalmSource. This splitting off took place however not in the controversy, but was for a long time planned. Since at the beginning of July 2005 firmiert the enterprise again under the name palm, Inc.

Competition by Microsoft

Palm along-invented the current form of the pin-steered pocket computers and had for long time a quasi-monopoly. The Palm devices were characterised by and a resources-careful operating system which can be learned simply and over a long period almost unchanged hardware. The complete Handheld market was almost controlled by by Palm developed the devices or by devices of other companies, which used the Palm operating system.

That changed, when Microsoft made institutes after the turn of the century, with its pocket PCs the Handheld market umzukrempeln. If the first devices were still error-prone and somewhat expensive, then it succeeded nevertheless in the second approach to penetrate with improved devices of Casio, HP, Compaq and many other manufacturers into the market. Differently than Palm Microsoft to today even no devices manufactures.

In contrast to at that time minimum equipment of the Palm Handhelds those offered pocket PC fast processors, much color, sound and - which was perhaps most important - a Windows similar operating system. Palm began to remove the pocket PC the market shares, only the large admittingness and the well made operating system protected Palm against still faster shrinking of market power.

Then however Palm began to against-steer: With the Tungsten T the first PalmOS-5-Handheld appeared. It offered a highly soluble color display, a fast processor, to "correct" sound (contrary to the beep tones of earlier Palms) and was inferior thereby the pocket PC in nothing more. Much had cribbed itself Palm from of Sony, which had tried to exceed the borders from PalmOS with their Handhelds to and devices with better display, sound and one had already before manufactured modified version of the PalmOS operating system for Multimedia applications.

The Tungsten T marked at the beginning of a complete modernization of the Palm product range. In the meantime the old Palms from the m and iii-series was displaced completely by a split offer from Tungsten and Zire. All devices now offer a fast arm processor with clock frequencies between 200 and 400Mhz, to extension plumb bob for SD-/MMC-Cards and the current operating system. Up to the Zire 31, whose color display offers only a dissolution of 160x160px, all current devices with a highly soluble color screen work.

This turning turn accomplished in impressing speed was absolutely vitally necessary for Palm, otherwise Microsoft would have probably dominated sooner or later the entire market. Still Palm at the end of of September 2005 showed more flexibility: It was announced that at the beginning of of 2006 a Treo with the Microsoft operating system Windows mobile 5,0 will come on the market. (S. Related links).

Market situation 2005

One in front: The kind of the data acquisition differs with the different market research institutes substantially. That already whirled up dust in the technical literature to unite - see in addition Related links completely down. This is particularly because of the convergence of the Smartphone and the PDA market. The devices cannot be kept apart any longer clearly.

World-wide the pure PDA market in the second quarter shrank, so that fewer devices than still another one year before were sold, continues to report the market researchers of IDC. Altogether the number of sold devices in the comparison to the previous year quarter decreased/went back by 20,8 per cent. The market leaders Palm and HP had to accept both losses.

In the second quarter 2005 Palm could sell world-wide 638,376 PDAs after IDC numbers and secured themselves with it again unquestioned the top position with a market share of 36,5 per cent. Still another one year before could look to Palm on a market share of 41,8 per cent.

Also HP as number two had to register losses and brought only 321,928 PDAs to customers. Thus HP in the second quarter 2005 reached a market share of 18,4 per cent, which was in the previous year quarter still about 24 per cent.

With a market share of 11,4 per cent (sold 199,921 devices) Acer already squints on the second place of HP, since the manufacturer added substantial. Because still another one year before came Acer only on a portion of 1,3 per cent. Also Dell could register an increase at place four and set world-wide 179,200 devices off, which corresponds to a market share of 10,2 per cent in the second quarter 2005 (previous year: 6.9 per cent). Yakumo with a market share of 3,3 per cent and 58,000 takes the fifth place sold PDAs.

Altogether in the second quarter 2005 world-wide 1.75 million PDAs were sold. In the previous year quarter the sales figures were about 2.21 million devices.

In the 3. Quarter 2005 could sell according to the own quarter report 470,000 Smartphones (Treo series) to Palm. That is an increase around 160% (in words: hundred sixty) in relation to the comparison quarter of the previous year. This number underlines those far convergence of PDA and Smartphone, addressed above.