[Peter]

I found this on a Mac website (Mac User

Monday 18th November 2002
PDA market too much for Apple, says industry expert
[MacUser] 15:55
Albert Chu knows a thing or two about PDAs. During his 14 years at Apple, he worked on Newton, the very first consumer handheld computer, and now spends his working days as vice president business development for PalmSource, the company responsible for the Palm OS. He spoke to us about the future of the handheld device and the Palm OS.

One company that Chu believes will not be entering the handheld market is Apple. The company, he says, is simply not big enough. Dell - with its huge market share and emphasis on costs rather than design and technology - may be able to make an impact in the Pocket PC market; Apple - whose very existence is predicated on costly R&D and design quality - cannot.

'I think the barrier to entry is harder. It's hard now and getting harder every day,' Chu said. 'Apple probably can't afford entry in to the market 'cause its going to cost so much to get in.'

Nonetheless, Chu acknowledged that Apple had played a major part in the development of the PDA and agreed that without the Newton, the interview would not be happening.

Despite the naysayers who said that there was no future in the PDA, Chu recollected, 'Newton really did, I think, spur all the industry titans at the time, even if they were non-believers.'

That the Newton failed is a matter of record, killed off by Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he rejoined the company in 1997. Why it failed is often debated, but in Chu's mind it was too much, too soon and too big.

'I think Apple was so enamoured by the technology that we definitely got something out before it was ready. Handwriting recognition, for example, was not quite there and I think we probably would have perfected that; but the one thing that I think Apple would have ultimately learned is, it's not just the technology but the form factor. One of the things that made Palm so successful from the get-go was it fitting your palm, it had long battery life, all the attributes that would make you want something like this. I think Apple would have eventually have gotten it but it would have taken it a bit of time to get there.'

Chu also spoke about where he envisions the future of the Palm platform lies. Palm OS 5 has just been released, but PalmSource is already progressing with the development of OS 6. Planned for release about a year from now, OS 6 will be designed to make it easier for developers to build their own applications, but the main emphasis is on wireless and PlamSource will be 'evangelising the developers to become wireless savvy'.

At the same time the company is looking at where the OS will be seen next. There are, said Chu, 'lots of devices that we can envision today and a lot of devices we wouldn't even dream of'. Environments where Chu believes we will see the Palm OS include cars - it is already deployed in GPS systems, houses, mulitimedia devices and 'Walkmans and things like that as they become smarter'.

'The opportunities,' he said, 'are quite vast'.

[OldManMac]

Unfortunately, nothing new here. Apple innovated, everybody else followed, and in this case, greatly improved upon. Any one who thought Apple was going to get back into the PDA market doesn't understand marketing and economics.

[TimmyDee51]

While this may be bad news for people hoping for an Apple PDA, I'm quite happy with my Newton. By the time the 2x00 series came out, Apple had it right. Even now, I don't see a need to improve on the Newton (except for wireless internet beyond 802.11b maybe, but I can't afford that).