PalmOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux

>Do you have any insight into or opinion about why Microsoft hasn't still
>been able to transfer their strength in development tools to gaining
>significant market share in mobile devices?

Unfortunately these are orthogonal items. Microsoft bet on Lot's of
functionality over and above the basic PDA capabilities of the Palm Devices
at the time. The systems were bulkier and more expensive at first and people
laughed saying "who needs all that extra stuff" but lo and behold - it's
just what people wanted and developers were able to take advantage of it
all. Same transition is happening in the phone markets. It's getting to the
point where calling someone is almost a secondary feature of a more capable
"Portable Device" Windows CE was designed to support that kind of system
from the start. Other OSs were not, so it's a longer reach for them to make
that happen. So why is WM behind? Because it's still more expensive to make
the more feature capable devices, the technology is changing literally on a
weekly basis, and device vendors are refusing to deal with software and OS
updates. All of that makes people skittish about buying the new feature rich
devices. Then there is the usability. So long as these things are sold as
phones with the basic number keypad as the primary input mechanism they will
continue to be overpowered phones. A new UI model is needed, so far the
Pocket PC phone edition type devices look the best for that, but they've got
limits as well.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

---

› See More: PalmOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux

>This is a must for palm and
>microsoft based interfaces since their OS is not able to do hard real time.
This is FALSE, it astounds me how anyone can continue to make this claim
after it's been shown false on many occasions over many versions of the OS.
Windows CE (The underlying OS for Windows Mobile) IS able to support hard
real-time systems, See the analysis performed by dedicated systems for
details of independent tests. I've built many a real time system based on
Windows CE.

Linux does not have real time natively, it was never designed for that.
There are some additions and add-ons that deal with the issue in a variety
of different ways some commercial others GPL with varying levels of success.
(Usually targeted for a specific industry or solution type)

The biggest reason why the phones run with 2 processors is that the radio
vendors want to tightly control the radio interface code and to standardize
throughout the industry on the "AT command Set'. The radio vendors want to
control the "stack" to protect their IP AND to protect the carriers. It's
possible to wreak havoc on the network with the low level radio stacks. By
having radio modules with hardened, tested and certified stacks built-in
that a device OEM can't mess with in any way, the carriers and device
vendors can get devices onto the network faster while maintaining network
integrity. The OS and CPUs are perfectly capable of doing it all. But the
security concerns keep it separate. Not a bad design really.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

I avoided chiming in because I wasn't sure how closely related WM still is
to CE, but yes, we built realtime high speed memory testers for Teradyne
based on CE because of its RTOS capabilities (which NT was not
capable of).

"Steve Maillet (eMVP)" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:%[email protected]...
> >This is a must for palm and
>>microsoft based interfaces since their OS is not able to do hard real
>>time.
> This is FALSE, it astounds me how anyone can continue to make this claim
> after it's been shown false on many occasions over many versions of the
> OS. Windows CE (The underlying OS for Windows Mobile) IS able to support
> hard real-time systems, See the analysis performed by dedicated systems
> for details of independent tests. I've built many a real time system based
> on Windows CE.
>

<stuff deleted>

> Steve Maillet
> EmbeddedFusion
> www.EmbeddedFusion.com
> smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com
>
>

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have a couple questions for the group.
>
> 1) What are the pros and cons of each of these operating systems?

Who cares.

> 2) Which of these PDA/Smartphone operating systems is the most likely
> to be the dominant player in the portable computing market 3 years from
> now and why?

Symbian. Phone manufactures like Nokia, SonyEricsson et al don't intend to
be commoditized by the OS vendor in the same way Microsoft commoditized the
PC market.

Whether that is relevant to ISV's is a different matter. For them, it is
which phones sell software.


--

Sander van der Wal
www.mBrainSoftware.com

RobR wrote:
> I avoided chiming in because I wasn't sure how closely related WM
> still is to CE ....

Is there something unclear in this? Windows Mobile is just a brand name
which means a device based on Windows CE operating system and Pocket PC or
Smartphone user interface (UI) that has to match different kinds of hardware
and software requirements.

Pocket PC and Smartphone 2003 ("Windows Mobile 2003") are based on Windows
CE 4.2.x and Pocket PC / Smartphone 5.0 ("Windows Mobile 5.0") are based on
Windows CE 5.0.

The difference between Windows CE and Windows Mobile is that there are also
other kinds of embedded Windows CE devices than Windows Mobile specified
devices.

A nice tour to different kinds of embedded Windows CE devices is available
at MSDN Channel 9 archives:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.as...ID=10924#10924

Or even this is a Windows CE device: http://www.14mz.com/

--
Tero Lehto
http://lehto.net/tero/

Sander van der Wal wrote:
> Symbian. Phone manufactures like Nokia, SonyEricsson et al don't
> intend to be commoditized by the OS vendor in the same way Microsoft
> commoditized the PC market.

Do hardware manufacturers actually have the power to choose this? If large
operators like O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone want Linux or Windows Mobile
devices, I bet there are manufacturers who are willing to offer them.

At the moment it seems Symbian has been the most powerful in the consumer
smartphone segment when it comes to tempting applications and services.

--
Tero Lehto
http://lehto.net/tero/

> On 29 Oct 2005 12:46:09 -0700, [email protected] wrote:
>
>>I have a couple questions for the group.
>>
>>1) What are the pros and cons of each of these operating systems?
>>
>>2) Which of these PDA/Smartphone operating systems is the most likely
>>to be the dominant player in the portable computing market 3 years from
>>now and why?
>
> The biggest threat to Palm and its future as an OS, in my opinion, is
> the fact that an increasing number of devices that use it, such as the
> Treo smartphones, are just plain crap when it comes to quality.
>
> I just converted to a Blackberry after having 2 Treo 600 handhelds
> go dead on me within a year. I love the functionality of the Palm
> OS, and the Blackberry's not as slick as I'd like it to me, but at
> the end of the day, if a device is not reliable, what good is its
> functionality?

Hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I bought my last phone based purely on considerations of battery life;
it came with a spare cell, and had a pretty long life battery to begin
with. It's not that I kill off battery quick; it's that the batteries
just tend to tail off and die, even under a pretty *low* usage
pattern.

(My mother has a cell phone that she almost *never* uses; if often
hasn't worked when she wanted it to because she doesn't regularly
charge it.)

I would certainly get pretty exorcised if I paid the huge bucks for a
Treo phone and then watched it go dead in a year.

We use Blackberries for oncall stuff at work; one thing that *really*
pleases me about the model we have is that the batteries are generic
and we can buy replacements for about $30, eminently reasonable for a
cell battery.

Nothing Palm offers today compares to that, simply evaluating based on
battery handling. Forget about whether or not the Treo's are
more/less robust; that's a separate issue.

Actually, I get the sense that Apple has a *most* fascinating take on
things with the iPod that may be a potent step forward.

- You can take iCal calendar files (in a "standard" vCal format) and
shove them in an iPod directory, and it'll turn that into an
on-the-iPod calendar.

- You shove pictures into a directory, and it'll display 'em.

- You shove vCard address information into a directory and there's a
local phonebook.

- Shove text documents in the "Notes" directory, and you can read
documents

- And of course, it plays MP3s ;-).

As far as "conversion/SYNCing" user interface is concerned, that's as
simple a scheme as I can imagine. It's not two-way, but updating
information on PDAs always sucked pretty bad. (And I say that as
someone who has used Graffiti with reasonable success since the Palm
1000.)

The iPod approach to these "PDA" features would have the possibility
of getting us out of the horrid interface lock-in that PDAs and cell
phones alike have so often suffered from.

A phone that lets you plug in SD cards with iPod style directories of
data would be most sweet. A sort of shocking form of simplicity...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.liamg" "@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/
If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.

>> I avoided chiming in because I wasn't sure how closely related WM
>> still is to CE ....

>Is there something unclear in this?
Apparently so, a quick scan of the newsgroups indicates that's close to the
#1 most frequently asked question. (E.g what's the difference between
Windows Mobile/Pocket PC/Smartphone and Windows CE. Sometimes it's phrased
differently but there's a lot of confusion as the branding for Windows
Mobile makes little or no mention of Windows CE as the core.)

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

"Sander van der Wal" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>I have a couple questions for the group.

>> 2) Which of these PDA/Smartphone operating systems is the most likely
>> to be the dominant player in the portable computing market 3 years from
>> now and why?
>
> Symbian. Phone manufactures like Nokia, SonyEricsson et al don't intend to
> be commoditized by the OS vendor in the same way Microsoft commoditized
> the
> PC market.

I wouldn't bet my company on it. Microsoft has an annoying tendency to keep
plugging away at a market, coupled with an almost unlimited basket of cash.

Also, the US handset market is a captive of the carriers. A
Microsoft<->Cingular or Microsoft <->VerizonWireless alliance could catapult
a 2nd or 3rd tier handset maker into a large position.

Also, as more people start running apps on handhelds, and developing small
line-of-business (custom) apps, the development platform and tools will have
an influence.

Don't get me wrong - I carry a Symbian handset, and it's better than the
other smartphone offerings. But, I wouldn't place a large bet against
Microsoft.

Jim Burks