Palm's trying to position itself for the next big bang in business wireless: mobile applications beyond e-mail. It's focusing on helping companies meet the considerable challenges of developing and deploying mobile apps. "Many of our business customers aren't ready to give up their laptops, but they're leaving them behind for short trips or day trips and using Treos instead," says Tara Griffin, Palm's VP of enterprise markets. The company last month formed the Palm Developer Network, which replaces its PluggedIn developer program and includes both Palm OS and Windows Mobile developers. The program offers technical, business, and marketing support, including an online library to answer developers' questions and compatibility testing services.
Palm sold 569,000 smartphones worldwide in its first fiscal quarter ended Sept. 1, up 21% from the comparable quarter last year. But that's slower than the market is growing, as Palm loses share to Motorola, Nokia, and others in the prosumer smartphone market. Even as the market grew by nearly 80% in the first half of 2006, according to Gartner, Palm's smartphone unit sales in the first quarter were up just 8% over the preceding quarter. The company has added higher-resolution screens and EV-DO modems to its devices, but it's done little innovation in form factor or functionality, says Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis.
Palm's recent adoption of Windows Mobile on some Treos could boost its market position. Microsoft says there already are some 20,000 applications for its platform.
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NOKIA: THE FUTURE KNOCKS
Nokia built its reputation in the cell phone market on form factors, voice quality, and overall usability--an arsenal it's bringing to the smartphone market. It's also trying to make its mark as an innovator, last month introducing in the U.S. the E62, a "dual-mode" smartphone that can switch between a Wi-Fi and cellular network. That means a person could start a phone conversation or browse the Web in a car over a cellular network and continue it over a Wi-Fi network when entering a building, where cellular signals can get weak. The E62 also can shift to an office wireless LAN network, possibly removing the need for an office phone and even the cost of cellular service. There's not much demand for this functionality yet, but it will grow if dependence on smartphones grows and cellular data networks expand. Mary McDowell, executive VP and general manager of Nokia Enterprise Solutions, maintains that fixed-to-mobile convergence "has the potential to revolutionize telephony costs for enterprises."Nokia also works with Avaya to allow businesses to connect Nokia smartphones with Avaya voice-over-IP PBXs. Using dual-mode phones with Session Initiation Protocol capabilities, users can make and receive calls over both cellular networks and WLANs on and off campus. "The idea is to have one device that's a productivity tool whether you're at your desk or in your car," McDowell says. Nokia plans to roll out a similar capability with Cisco Systems later this year.
Nokia's E62 uses Cingular's Edge network. With download speeds of up to 135 Kbps and upload speeds of up to 32 Kbps, the service is suitable for Web browsing but still falls short of cable or DSL. Cingular is catching up to Sprint's and Verizon Wireless' EV-DO networks, which offer download speeds of between 400 and 700 Kbps and upload speeds of 50 to 70 Kbps, by rolling out its next-generation HSDPA network in select geographic areas, at speeds of about 1 Mbps.
