Why Palm is doomed

THINGS APPEAR TO BE going fairly well for Palm right now. After several years of Microsoft onslaught, it still owns the majority of the handheld market, and is keeping its head above water in a down market. It has recently revamped the entire product line, successfully moved to a completely different CPU architecture without many problems, broadened the range of devices its OS is in, and shown a convincing lead in performance over WinCE based devices.. Even in this miserable economy, it is in no imminent danger of going under. So far, so good.

The problem is that Palm has taken aim at its own foot, shot with deadly accuracy, and is in the process of handing the entire sector to Microsoft. In one seemingly simple step, it has given control of the core functionality to Microsoft. A Palm Pilot is not much more than an address book and phone number list. Sure, the new ones have 144MHz ARM based CPUs, megs of memory, and can run programs as fast as a desktop of a few years ago, but they still have the functions of a paper day planner at their heart. This heart is what they have just handed over.

The latest Palm, the Tungsten-T is the finest example of the breed I have ever used, and I have owned a succession of Palms from the first Palm Pilot to my beloved Palm III, and this new one puts them all to shame. It is cleaner, neater, and simply more ergonomic than any of the latest Clies, iPaqs or Axims, and costs less too, mostly. The problem is software.

Palm bundles the Tungsten with a supposedly huge value in bundled software. As with any piece of hardware, most is garbage, with the occasional useful gem thrown in. One gem seemed to be VersaMail. I was actually looking forward to being able to download my address book to the Palm, and take it with me. Productivity on the road would go up, new contacts would go in automatically, and life would be a small bit better. I quickly loaded it up.

Going through the menus, I looked for the usual "sync to" menu, or maybe a "pick your mail program". Since I use Netscape 7 for my mail, I am used to picking "generic MAPI mail" from the menus of ACT, Lotus Organizer, and all the other things that sync to my mail. I came up curiously short. The palm.com knowledge base was no more use than the on screen help. Mozilla.com and netscape.com had nothing but a tantalizing clue about a sync conduit that was planned, and may have been started. Google didn't get me much more. Off to the aforementioned mail program to write the excellent Palm support team. In the past they have been consistently one of the best in the business.

Following the usual tech support routine, I wrote a long, detailed list of my hardware, software, and what I was trying to accomplish. The short summary is that I can't figure out how to sync my Netscape address book to my palm pilot. A polite form letter followed telling me how to set up the pilot to get new mail, something I specifically stated I did not want to do. Guess I was not clear enough. A second mail followed, quoting the original, along with the response, and clarifying what I needed to do. Again, they told me how to get new pop mail, in much more detail this time. I wasn't getting through.

Rather than get on the phone and yell at some poor shmuck who had no clue, and even less fault, I decided to write again. This time, quoting the original 2 messages, along with responses, I again pointed out my goals, but I quoted their responses and told them why they were wrong. I used small words. I was polite. I was pissed. I was not, however, prepared for the response.

The people at Palm finally got my point! They understood. Miracle of miracles, a tech support team that can get a clue. Oh happy day. I almost cried. Then I read the entirety of the text, and I did cry. They indicated that there was no way to do what I was asking, and I should get bent before I write back, but I could call them for $25 an incident, where they would most likely tell me to get bent by voice. The official line is that I was using a 3rd party application, and they do not support 3rd party applications. Again, no problem there. Well one minor problem, the CD they bundle with the Tungsten is filled with things to support 3rd party applications. These apps are mostly Microsoft applications, and that is where the problem lies.

Palm will sync up with just about every flavor of Outlook under the sun, and do it well, better in all respects than the MS software that comes with whatever they are calling the PocketPC this week. Address books, notes, mail, everything comes down, as long as it is a Microsoft product. How this is not "3rd party" software is beyond me. Did MS and Palm merge a few weeks ago and not tell me? Are all the other viewers and conduits owned by Palm now? Is the tech support team feeding me a load because they couldn't be bothered? Who knows, I doubt I'll ever know, but I am stuck unless there is a cerebral hemorrhage in my future, and I forget why Outlook is so dangerous, and probably lose control of my left side and bladder. Come to think of it, that would be preferable to Outlook.

This seemingly simple thing is the end of Palm however. On the most basic level, it has taken its core functionality, and made it usable only with Microsoft desktop software, its main competitor. MS is known for their dirty tricks squad, and will do just about anything to stick a knife between the shoulder blades of anything it deems a threat, and Palm is high on that list. By relegating the heart of their business to a second class player that feeds on Microsoft's scraps, a generation behind the latest outlook, and subject to "incompatibilities" with every new service pack, Palm is screwed, plain and simple.

The only way it can avoid the slippery slope of being relegated to a second class citizen is to aggressively develop better solution for the PC, and support all other contenders. You want your customers to use your software, not hand them to your competition on a platter. Does this cost money? Sure, lots, and it is hard work, with little dividends in the short run. In the long run, it also assures your survival, or at least does not assure your doom. Unfortunately Palm either has corporate blinders on, or doesn't get the big picture. Microsoft does, and you can bet it is laughing all the way to the bank. While Palm may make the best hardware out there, without a radical change in software, my next purchase will be an iPaq. I wonder how much I can get for a barely used Tungsten-T on Ebay? µ