Originally published February 6 2006
Palm smartphone based on Microsoft's Windows
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The new Treo 700w from Palm uses a Windows-based model to address a bigger market. Analysts say the Windows system does a better job than the Palm operating system concerning intensive data applications.
Palm Inc.'s newest Treo smartphone is its first based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, but the pioneering handheld maker adds plenty of distinct touches of its own.
The Treo 700w, available on the Verizon Wireless cellular service starting Thursday, also integrates access to Verizon's high-speed EV-DO data network.
While the original Treos based on the Palm operating system helped define the smartphone category, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm hopes the new Windows-based model will expand its reach into the lucrative market of corporate users.
"IT managers in big corporations were saying they've standardized their platforms on Microsoft, and no matter what we did on the Palm OS, they just weren't going to use them," said Ken Wirt, Palm's senior vice president of worldwide marketing.
Features such as accessing e-mail or phone contacts, for instance, becomes a smoother process because the Treo 700w now could work directly with businesses' servers that use Microsoft's Outlook mail program.
That also poses an increasing challenge to Research in Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry wireless e-mail device and gadgets that add phone functionality to wireless messaging.
Smartphones, which combine voice, data and wireless messaging capabilities, have been gaining in popularity and are seen as the wave of the future as they become more powerful and better equipped to handle functions previously reserved for laptops.
Microsoft's Windows platform for mobile devices, which analysts say does a better job than the Palm operating system when it comes to handling multimedia and intensive data applications, has steadily seized market share away from the once-dominant PalmOS provider PalmSource Inc.
Now the Redmond, Wash.-based company has overtaken PalmSource, according to Gartner Inc. market research firm.
In the second quarter of 2005, about 560,000 smartphones equipped with Windows were shipped worldwide.
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