ZDNet: Based on some the announcements you've been making, it looks like you're using partners to fill in the gaps. How are you deciding which partners to go with?

Nagel: First of all, we're trying to be a little selective. Something like mail, though, is really complicated. In addition to not knowing who's going to win in the handheld mail space, we don't do the back end stuff and don't intend to for the foreseeable future.

ZDNet: You almost did, right?

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Nagel: We didn't. Palm did-- the hardware guys. But it didn't work. It's really hard for hardware companies to sell software. What happens is, the sales guys go out and sell you a bunch of Tungsten C's and someone says, "if you throw in the software, I'll buy it." Once you get into that cycle of giving software away, it becomes a nightmare because there's still cost of goods. Meanwhile, the customer is saying "What you mean? It doesn't cost you anything. It's just a box of stuff." Hardware and software are two very different businesses. That's one of the reasons we're splitting. Now, for software, we're starting to choose partners very carefully. Obviously, they have to be philosophically aligned with us. That's one of the reasons that the Visto partnership is going to work so well for us. They understand that we're going to be sort of universal client. (Editor's note: Visto is a provider of wireless handheld-based email solutions and is now working with PalmSource to build a wireless email client that device manufacturers and wireless carriers can include as their PalmOS-based device's default messaging solution. For more information, see ZDNet's Webcast interview with Visto marketing vice president Tom O'Brien). We can work with Visto on ideas such as the one you talked about, where the BlackBerry collects everything in one place. It's a very good idea and I think we can manage it. The alternative is to pick a single solution in each category and then alienate 90 percent of the customers. The other thing that we're looking at is the out-of-the-box stuff. I think one of the problems we have to solve is how to package things. Most of the IT purchase decisions made in this country are made by small businesses. There's something like 3 million small businesses and, out of those, 300,000 people account for three quarters of all IT purchases. Many of those guys don't have big IT departments. They have a few guys to keep stuff running and they want to buy a box of stuff that works. That is something we have to solve and that's something we're working on.

		'We're getting our act together on the phone side. I don't claim to have the last best solution. But we will have it.'

ZDNet: The real opportunity for PalmSource is to tap in to the Java developer base because of its size-- roughly 3 million developers. Most if not all of them are experienced in building network-based applications, which is important as more and more handheld applications --- especially enterprise ones --- are expected to work over wireless networks with a lot of latency. Why doesn't PalmSource focus on one of the largest and fastest growing developer bases as opposed to the relatively small number of developers focused on the PalmOS? Also, many of ZDNet's readers have complained about how there are different versions of the PalmOS currently shipping with different PalmOS-based devices and how there are software incompatibilities between them. Why does that situation exist? The reason these questions are related is because, with Java as a development target, you get to move away from the question of whether it's Palm OS 4, Palm OS 5, or the next one.

Nagel: So, which version of Java do you have? Which implementation? The problem with Java is that it isn't unified. It really isn't. All the phone guys have their own variants. On my phone, I was hoping to use Java for the network interface; all the provisioning and transaction-based stuff. I don't want to rebuild that every time. I don't want to have to build a central socket for every other player. It would help to have some standardization, but all the carriers have forked off different variants of Java. So, I'm trying to be agnostic on this stuff.

ZDNet: That could be said of older versions of Java, but Sun and the Java Community Process seem committed to leveling that out. Many of those problems have either already gone away, or will be done away with eventually.

Nagel: They also seem committed to have differentiation. Everybody wants their variant to be the standard. Also, I don't know about the complaints and the confusion over different versions of the operating system. The applications that run on OS 4 work almost without exception on OS 5. It's been a pretty good transition and we have actually not had a lot of complaints.

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