Kleuren Palm begin volgend jaar

News.com meldt dat we waarschijnlijk in februari een Palm met kleuren display mogen verwachten. De naam van het beestje wordt Palm IIIc:

The move could present challenges for Palm. The color-display release presents a new set of thorny issues for the company, which has so far predicated its marketing and development strategy on a so-called Zen of Palm principle, which mandates keeping devices as simple as possible, even at the expense of cooler features. By their very nature, color displays are exceedingly complex to implement, which raises questions about whether Palm is unwisely veering from its tried-and-true strategy.

"I think they're probably just slamming it in there because everyone told them they have to do it," said Ken Dulaney of Gartner Group. "People think [Palm is] kind of brain dead because they can't do color--they give the explanations, but no one listens to that, so they have to throw things in there and see what happens."

[...] By adding color displays to its product mix, Palm has negated the one technical advantage of Microsoft's scaled-down Windows CE operating system. Palm may also be walking into the same problems Microsoft has grappled with over the last year, including clumsy designs and unacceptable battery life.

"One of the reasons the Palm battery lasts so long is that people don't use them the way people use Windows CE devices," Nelson said. "They're on the cusp of running into some of the problems that Microsoft has already solved."