Kenneth Smiley Director Giga Information Group

Palm's ultimate success doesn't depend on its partnership with IBM, but this partnership does lend some additional semblance of credibility, at least for IBM WebSphere customers who want to do something with a Palm OS device. How successful Palm will ultimately be depends on Palm's ability to bring new and compelling products to market on the mobile platform side of the equation, coupled with server-based offerings or additional partnerships to round out offerings that provide a means for an organization to reorganize its business to make use of mobile offerings.

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This deal alone likely will not give Palm a competitive edge against Microsoft. The Pocket PC platform is hands down the choice in the enterprise market today where organizations are actively deploying mobile platforms for business purposes (in other words I am excluding individuals who bring their Palms to work which are often included in some views of the enterprise). Palm must deliver OS 5 product to market quickly and provide compelling applications that will be attractive to enterprise customers to remain competitive in the enterprise market. This deal doesn't hurt them, but it also isn't the sole answer to Palm's enterprise woes.

WebSphere probably no help

I doubt that anyone is going to buy WebSphere to get to the Palm platform. In fact, there is some question whether or not WebSphere applications will be written to the Palm OS at all or to something else like Java, in which case the applications could ostensibly run on Pocket PC, Symbian, or any other OS that has Java capabilities. WebSphere is an expensive proposition and a significant investment by any organization considering it; there are quite a few other options that are likely to appeal to organizations without an existing WebSphere commitment. If WebSphere applications only ran on Palm, that might give Palm a boost, but IBM would never do this given the existing penetration of Pocket PC devices in the enterprise.

Additional measures

Both Palm and IBM need to work out the development strategy and target developer resources accordingly. If the applications don't exist, the platform isn't going to matter. Palm for its part also must offer less expensive solutions or partner to offer these solutions for potential customers for whom WebSphere isn't an option.

IBM and Palm's last collaboration wasn't very successful, so they don't have far to go to exceed prior results. I suspect in terms of dollars for Palm's OS side of the house this deal holds more promise than for the hardware group.

Do you agree with the analysts? What do you think Palm has to do to give Microsoft's Pocket PC a good run in the enterprise market? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.

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