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In the overhyped PDA industry, 3Com's PalmPilot has been the only product to get it right. In only 18 months, the PalmPilot sold more than a million copies, while Apple's now-defunct (as of Feb. 27) Newton sold only 200,000 in its entire life span. Other minor rivals such as Psion's Series 5 have seen sales slip as the PalmPilot's market share rose to 66 percent.
So on Mar. 9, when 3Com announced its brand-new Palm III, it seemed like icing on the cake. The newest member to the amazingly PalmPilot line, the Palm III was thinner, faster, and just plain better than its predecessors. In fact, for people who didn't need the Palm III's power, 3Com slashed the prices of its other models. So what could possibly go wrong?
One word: Microsoft. Microsoft has seen the PDA revolution grow and the PalmPilot's share go up. It saw that the operating system it used wasn't Windows (Microsoft has created some seven or eight handheld versions of Windows in the same number of years). It saw that more and more people were buying the little digital wonders, and that nowhere on the machine did it have a mention of the name Microsoft.
Naturally, Microsoft came into the market segment with a new OS, Windows CE. Flexible, powerful, and a direct descendent of Windows, Windows CE on the whole powered handheld PCs (H/PCs) for most of last year, garnering support from vendors like Phillips and Casio.
And now Microsoft is back for more. Although the H/PC took nearly a third of the PDA market in less than a year, there was no direct competitor to the PalmPilot for Microsoft. So last January, Microsoft announced that it had created a new spec for palmtop PCs, dubbed "Palm PCs," that would compete with the PalmPilot.
Although the Palm PCs and PalmPilot will be direct competitors, they should have many differences and a different philosophy. Which one is better? That's left up for you to decide, but I've created a checklist so you can make the best decision for yourself.
Windows CE or Palm OS? Each competitor has a decent argument about why they have the better and more marketable OS. With more than a million copies of it out, the Palm OS is hands-down the most popular portable OS. On the other hand, users may prefer the Windows-like look and feel of Windows CE, not to mention its advanced capabilities.
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