back to article Palm waves farewell to Windows Mobile

Palm's four-year flirtation with Windows Mobile is over, now it finally has an operating system to call its own again. Company Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein last night said that the Palm would now "dedicate all future development resources to the evolution of webOS" with the result that "going forward our roadmap will …

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  1. Daniel 1

    History of Windows Mobile: It's a Mahatma Ghandi quotation in reverse

    First you win

    Then they fight you

    Then they laugh at you

    Then they ignore you.

  2. whiteafrican
    Stop

    Ummm...

    "Windows Mobile never became the Windows 95 or even the Windows 3 of the handset market. Palm's latest move shows it never will."... huh?

    Sorry, but this statement is absurd - the fact that Palm, a bit-part player in the industry for the last 5 years, has decided to stop using a competitor's operating system (mostly because it has now developed its own again) in no way shows anything about that operating system. This is particularly apparent when you consider that HTC, HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, LG and Samsung (to name but a few) support Windows Mobile, have more money and ship more units than Palm (at this point).

    The biggest factors that have prevented Microsoft (so far) from dominating the mobile phone market the way they dominate the desktop and laptop markets have been Apple and Rim. Palm are more or less irrelevant to the equation at this point.

  3. Sarev
    FAIL

    This isn't the 90s any more

    You can't make much money out of 'middleware' in embedded devices, let alone the OS. To try to build a commercial model around licensing your OS is plain dumb; the money is in the services.

  4. calagan
    Happy

    Good news

    There has been a long time when hardware manufacturers didn't have any other choice other than WinMo if they wanted to build a high-end smartphone. Those days are over: I feel as if we're back in the early nineties when dozens of computer manufacturers were competing for the lead, each with their own innovations

  5. Grant Quinn
    WTF?

    Symbian...

    ... isn't owned by Nokia. Nokia owned some of it, then bought the rest of it, then spun it all off as an independent foundation. This is why Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and LG all make Symbian phones as well as Nokia.

  6. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Palm's best option

    Palm should licence their OS to other makers. There simply isn't enough handsets with their OS on it around and they need a good number of users to get the OS established more.

    They don't really have the fan base Apple have to make it a goer alone.

  7. David Edwards

    Now all they nned to do

    Is put graffiti back on, loose that keyboard and i MIGHT trade my iphone in for one as my iphone is about as good as my old Palm 5 (Screen res/wifi/bluetooth/phone excepted .......actually thats quite a lot isnt it!) still I loved my old Palm. (no sniggering at the back)

  8. h 6
    Jobs Halo

    as did HTC

    Bye-bye, Windows Mobile, bye-bye!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Palm's mistake...

    Palm's mistake was spinning off their O/S, the instant they did that they lost their identity. A Palm device was the Palm hardware AND the software. Short sighted people (like those currently running YAHOO!) nearly relegated palm to the has-been list of the business world. They still have much catching up to do.

  10. ForthIsNotDead
    Coat

    So?

    Who cares?

    When you buy a 'phone, you're not asking yourself "what OS is it running?"

    Seriously, if it works, I just could not care less.

    If it:

    a) Makes and receives calls

    b) Does SMS

    c) Takes the odd picture

    Then I'm happy.

    Anything else, cool, but it's just gravy ;-)

    Mines the one with the Nokia 9610i in the pocket ;-)

  11. Lars Silver badge
    Gates Halo

    So

    WebOS is based on Linux. SE is skipping MS. The new kid on the block is Linux, WebOS, Maemo or Android or whatever.

    Not surprised, and I believe there is a lot about the company Microsoft that drives this too.

    When Microsoft decided to produce a cell phone OS the main target, according to Gates, was to beat Nokia.

    Next he tries to persuade Nokia to produce MS cell phones. Ballmer flies twice to Helsinki to explain how wonderful it would be for Nokia to accept.

    Failure. Failure.

    Who the hell wants to work with a company like MS if there is a choice.

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