Palm Teams with Microsoft on Smart Phone

A couple of more articles about the Palm, Microsoft, Verizon announcement tomorrow morning. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Todd Kort at Gartner said, "This is very important for Palm. PalmOS is a fairly ancient operating system, and if Palm had stuck with it, (Palm) might have followed PalmOS into oblivion." Kort noted that five years ago the PalmOS "used on 70 percent of the world's smart phones and personal digital assistants. Now its market share is in the low single digits."

Pablo Perez-Fernandez at ThinkEquity Partners added, "For Microsoft, this means they have broken into one of the leading smart phone manufacturers, and it validates their software."

Over at Forbes, Roger Kay, at Endpoint Technologies Associates said, "It's clear that Palm has been losing ground to RIM. The Blackberry has been setting the pace with features that are especially popular with business travelers."

Bruce Richardson at AMR Research added, "Microsoft is hedging its bets on what the device of the future is going to be. The laptop of the future is going to be a cell phone and, obviously, Microsoft is continuing to put up as much barbwire and reinforcement around the Office franchise as possible."