The Story
In an interview, Palm CEO John Rubinstein said that Palm will no longer build Windows Mobile handsets. According to Mr. Rubinstein,
Due to importance of WebOS to our overall strategy, we’ve made the decision to dedicate all future development resources to the evolution of WebOS. Which means that going forward, our roadmap will include only Palm WebOS-based devices.
Why It Would Be Stupid For Palm To Make Windows Mobile Devices
The answer is simple: app stores. App stores are the most attractive element associated with any mobile platform these days. Think about it. Apple made 2.2% of their revenue in 2009 through the iPhone App Store, and that’s doing very little work. All Apple does is some administrative work, whereas the developers of iPhone applications are the ones doing what one should consider real work.
Right now, what Palm wants is to push WebOS. It’s even paying developers to make applications for the platform right now. Eventually, Palm hopes that WebOS will be a sustainable development ecosystem, one in which developers make applications, the applications to into the store, and Palm gets a cut for each sale. But for it to be sustainable, developers have to want to make apps for the platform without Palm’s impetus. Besides, it’d be pretty dumb for Palm to make Windows Mobile handsets given that Microsoft makes money whenever Windows Mobile apps are sold.
Fun Fact
Back in the early 2000’s, Mr. Rubinstein worked for Apple. While he was on a business trip to Japan, he went to a talk where a representative from a Japanese company told him about some 1.8″ hard drives that they had built. These would later be the main part around which the iPod was built.
