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by James Avery.
Original Post: Sony cutting PDAs is big news
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The fact that Sony is going to stop making PDAs is pretty big news not just for PDAs in general, but for palm specifically. Alot of people might not know but Sony actually held something like 20% of the recently spun off company Palmsource, I doubt they will have the same interest in the company if they are not producing devices that use the software. (Palmsource was created to handle the software side, PalmOne handles the hardware side)
Sony was also the only major non Palm company using Palm's software, especially after Palm bought up Handspring. As more people get smartphones, whether MS or not, this will cut more and more into Palm's marketshare... eventually I think the only hardware running Palmsource will be phone/PDA combos.
Microsoft can expect the same sort of trend, but there will always be a contingency of companies who use Pocket PC or CE as a platform for business applications. Delta is doing this on all their non-meal serving flights, the stewardess's carry a pocket pc with them to charge people for whatever meal they want. Palm does not really have this area of the business, so they can expect an even sharper decline as the PDA and the phone merge.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would not be buying or owning Palm stock at this point, they have missed the boat on snagging the business customers and I also think they have failed in the phone/PDA market. Some people want a Phone/PDA device like the Pocket PC Phone Edition, or the Treo, but others simply want a smartphone... like the Symbian or MS smartphone OS. Palm should have been all over this, they should have built a good smartphone OS... but they missed the boat this time.
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