Stephen H. Wildstrom, himself a Palm fan, concedes that Windows Mobile makes sense for a converged device like the Treo. "The first Pocket PC Phone Editions, which came out three years ago, were ghastly, but the hardware and software have steadily improved," he writes.
Treo and Pocket PC phone hardware are virtually identical these days, according to Wildstrom. Additionally, Windows Mobile is increasingly popular with corporate users, especially those with email systems based on Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, he notes.
While this is "is bound to cause howls of betrayal among the Palm faithful," writes Wildstrom, "the time is ripe for Palm to move to Windows Mobile."
Read the full
Business Week story
here. Read our prior coverage of Palm's rumored Treo 670 based on Windows Mobile 5.0
here and
here.
Meanwhile, assuming the new Treo will indeed run Windows Mobile 5.0, it is unclear whether Palm plans to focus exclusively on Windows Mobile, or whether it will be platform-agnostic like Motorola, which now makes mobile phones both
based on Windows Mobile and
based on Linux. Read about Palm-spinout PalmSource's much-publicized embrace of Linux,
here, and its recent acquisition by ACCESS software,
here.
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