Armageddon is being brought to the Palm unit world courtesy of Microsoft's Windows CE 3.0, a powerful beast which, as I write this, slouches toward Redmond to be born. Windows CE 3.0 is the operating system designed by Microsoft to power a new generation of the PDAs (formerly know as Palm-sized PCs, now re-labeled "Pocket PCs").

So, how big and bad a wolf is the Pocket PC and is it a threat to Palm's Lilliputian quest for world domination?

The end is nigh
If you believe the hysteria, Windows CE 3.0 will be a Palm device-killer. Microsoft will put all its considerable resources, both in software and marketing, behind this product in hopes of finally muscling into the fast-growing PDA market. Some industry pundits predict the effort will pay off, and by 2003 Microsoft will own over half the PDA market, relegating Palm, Inc. to the status of also-ran.

Of course, these are the same soothsayers who predicted Microsoft's first effort in this category, Windows CE 2.0, would knock Palm, Inc. off its pedestal. Come to think of it, they're the same jokers who in the spring of 1996 scoffed at a new electronic organizer called the PalmPilot, labeling it "the world's most expensive address book." Of course, they were wrong. The Newton was the world's most expensive address book, but I digress.

If you follow the latest line of reasoning flowing from these oracles, Microsoft will invest so much manpower and marketing dollars in the Windows CE 3.0 Pocket PC that Palm, Inc. will be dead inside five years. Then we'll all spend more time staring at the Windows start-up screen on our PDAs than actually checking our schedules. Bulletin boards on Palm device-related Web sites are full of these sorts of gloomy predictions. The same propeller-heads that gleefully listed the shortcomings of the Windows CE 2.0 Palm-sized PC and rejoiced in its failure are now heading for the fallout shelters, Palm units in hand.

Time for a reality check
Microsoft isn't going to kill off Palm, Inc. overnight. Microsoft may well be the world's strongest company, but ousting an entrenched monopolist from its market is a Herculean undertaking. And Palm, Inc. is surely an entrenched monopolist. Even the industry prophets of doom recognize Palm, Inc. has a market share approaching 80 percent, and those estimates probably include archaic clamshell-type devices that aren't truly in the same market. From down here at the regular guy level, I can report that although I occasionally see somebody sporting a Palm organizer on my subway ride, I've never ever seen anyone using another organizer, Windows CE or otherwise.