4 ms·

>There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones ... That's not really true because there was the PDA market, whic

>There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones ... That's not really true because there was the PDA market, which was dominated by Palm and Microsoft. So you had RIM and Nokia in one corner, and Palm and Microsoft in the other. Any one of them could have created the iPhone but none of them really got it, and they are where they are.

edderly 14y ago
This is fairly illusory as a comparison. I don't believe the PDA market ever amounted to more than 12 million devices a year. Whilst by the year 2000 the entire mobile phone market was around 700 million. Plus it didn't help that MS were trying to charge unrealistic prices for the OS, in 1999 they were asking for $80 per unit....
- macspoofing 14y ago
  Pre-iPhone, there was a small PDA market, a bigger smartphone market, and a huge cell phone market. PDAs are a precursor to the iPhone, as much as (if not more than) Blackberries and Symbian phones. Both Palm and Microsoft were experimenting with PDAs with phone functionality years before the iPhone (which is why Ballmer was so dismissive of the iPhone at launch). They were so very close.
  - edderly 14y ago
    Yes, PDAs existed and you could see an evolution of phone to smartphone which included PDA like features. However, in the early 00s the money was in dumbphones simply because the BOM cost of the RAM/ROM, AP and modem was pretty high. The real migration path was from phones, either in terms of incorporating PDA like features in to existing platforms like Series 40, or using an OS capable of running in low memory, execute in place environments. IMO Symbian was much more capable of achieving that need than either Palm or MS, at least because of it's low memory requirements and it's OS architecture was more advanced so it didn't have pseudo-arbitrary limits such as the 32 process limit that W/E had: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_CE_6.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_CE_6.0 Also obviously the Symbian heritage was from PDAs (EPOC32 from PSION). I'm not saying that Symbian was a great OS, however, it really had the measure of MS technically in those times and Palm OS at that time was well known to be in the stone-age OS wise.
ekianjo 14y ago
The PDA market was ridiculously small (I owned one and I hardly knew anyone else who did) and was not growing at the time. PDAs were pricey, and while they could do many of the things that the iPhone did later, most people did not see its value back then. Well, it was a very fragmented market focused only on professionals. It was never aimed to consumers (a big mistake).
- macspoofing 14y ago
  >Whilst by the year 2000 the entire mobile phone market was around 700 million. What was the size of the smartphone market? I'd guess it wasn't that big either, certainly it isn't anywhere near present-day numbers. And yes, I am differentiating between "smartphone" and "cell phone" market. The former was small, the latter was huge. > Well, it was a very fragmented market focused only on professionals. It was never aimed to consumers (a big mistake). You could say the same for RIM, who was never that interested in building a consumer phone. Many mistakes were made by all incumbents..
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    By the way, you may not be aware of this, but RIM had (and still has, somehow), a huge consumer following in certain countries like Indonesia because of the chat applications it provided ahead of the rest. Until not too long ago it was bigger than the iphone and Android phones there (I need to find a link for that, though...)
    - kingr 14y ago
      I live in South Africa. We are one of the countries with a huge RIM following, you can find a black berry device on every street corner.
- r00fus 14y ago
  The iPhone did what it could do because it bundled a data plan that was reasonable at the time ($20/month unlimited, though 2G only, was a pretty damn good deal). Prior to my iPhone I used a Treo 6xx series that Verizon wanted me to pay $45/m for data (2G also). The lack of native data connectivity made PDAs deal with the continually nasty and ever under-estimated problem of sync. With iPhoneOS v1, Apple matched what Palm had to offer - an iPod touch was almost as good as a Palm PDA, an iPhone better than a Treo. With iOS2 and ActiveSync, it blew away it's competition.
Spooky23 14y ago
Microsoft existed in the PDA space to keep Palm from growing. Lets face it, the secret sauce to smartphones from a technology POV is the web and web services. Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6, and thought that they had put the Internet problem to bed.
- macspoofing 14y ago
  You can write a book on the number of missteps and missed opportunities Microsoft had in the last 10-15 years. They missed the boat on everything from search, to web-mail, to social networks, to digital music, to smartphones. >Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6 I remember when that news hit slashdot like it was yesterday. I remember because I got really angry at Microsoft and their idiocy. I actually thought ie6 was a decent browser, but there was no fuckin chance it was going to be-all and end-all of browsers. It was also the day that I really started looking for an alternative. Soon after, I installed Firebird beta and never looked back.
- yuhong 14y ago
  Disbanded the IE rendering engine team.

edderly 14y ago

This is fairly illusory as a comparison. I don't believe the PDA market ever amounted to more than 12 million devices a year. Whilst by the year 2000 the entire mobile phone market was around 700 million. Plus it didn't help that MS were trying to charge unrealistic prices for the OS, in 1999 they were asking for $80 per unit....

macspoofing 14y ago
Pre-iPhone, there was a small PDA market, a bigger smartphone market, and a huge cell phone market. PDAs are a precursor to the iPhone, as much as (if not more than) Blackberries and Symbian phones. Both Palm and Microsoft were experimenting with PDAs with phone functionality years before the iPhone (which is why Ballmer was so dismissive of the iPhone at launch). They were so very close.
- edderly 14y ago
  Yes, PDAs existed and you could see an evolution of phone to smartphone which included PDA like features. However, in the early 00s the money was in dumbphones simply because the BOM cost of the RAM/ROM, AP and modem was pretty high. The real migration path was from phones, either in terms of incorporating PDA like features in to existing platforms like Series 40, or using an OS capable of running in low memory, execute in place environments. IMO Symbian was much more capable of achieving that need than either Palm or MS, at least because of it's low memory requirements and it's OS architecture was more advanced so it didn't have pseudo-arbitrary limits such as the 32 process limit that W/E had: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_CE_6.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_CE_6.0 Also obviously the Symbian heritage was from PDAs (EPOC32 from PSION). I'm not saying that Symbian was a great OS, however, it really had the measure of MS technically in those times and Palm OS at that time was well known to be in the stone-age OS wise.

ekianjo 14y ago

The PDA market was ridiculously small (I owned one and I hardly knew anyone else who did) and was not growing at the time. PDAs were pricey, and while they could do many of the things that the iPhone did later, most people did not see its value back then. Well, it was a very fragmented market focused only on professionals. It was never aimed to consumers (a big mistake).

macspoofing 14y ago
>Whilst by the year 2000 the entire mobile phone market was around 700 million. What was the size of the smartphone market? I'd guess it wasn't that big either, certainly it isn't anywhere near present-day numbers. And yes, I am differentiating between "smartphone" and "cell phone" market. The former was small, the latter was huge. > Well, it was a very fragmented market focused only on professionals. It was never aimed to consumers (a big mistake). You could say the same for RIM, who was never that interested in building a consumer phone. Many mistakes were made by all incumbents..
- ekianjo 14y ago
  By the way, you may not be aware of this, but RIM had (and still has, somehow), a huge consumer following in certain countries like Indonesia because of the chat applications it provided ahead of the rest. Until not too long ago it was bigger than the iphone and Android phones there (I need to find a link for that, though...)
  - kingr 14y ago
    I live in South Africa. We are one of the countries with a huge RIM following, you can find a black berry device on every street corner.
r00fus 14y ago
The iPhone did what it could do because it bundled a data plan that was reasonable at the time ($20/month unlimited, though 2G only, was a pretty damn good deal). Prior to my iPhone I used a Treo 6xx series that Verizon wanted me to pay $45/m for data (2G also). The lack of native data connectivity made PDAs deal with the continually nasty and ever under-estimated problem of sync. With iPhoneOS v1, Apple matched what Palm had to offer - an iPod touch was almost as good as a Palm PDA, an iPhone better than a Treo. With iOS2 and ActiveSync, it blew away it's competition.

Spooky23 14y ago

Microsoft existed in the PDA space to keep Palm from growing. Lets face it, the secret sauce to smartphones from a technology POV is the web and web services. Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6, and thought that they had put the Internet problem to bed.

macspoofing 14y ago
You can write a book on the number of missteps and missed opportunities Microsoft had in the last 10-15 years. They missed the boat on everything from search, to web-mail, to social networks, to digital music, to smartphones. >Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6 I remember when that news hit slashdot like it was yesterday. I remember because I got really angry at Microsoft and their idiocy. I actually thought ie6 was a decent browser, but there was no fuckin chance it was going to be-all and end-all of browsers. It was also the day that I really started looking for an alternative. Soon after, I installed Firebird beta and never looked back.
yuhong 14y ago
Disbanded the IE rendering engine team.