Gerald MacDonald responds to the response
I have no doubt that Palm can succeed in the long run. It can't happen under their current business plan, though. I feel their plan is to break up their hardware and software divisions into two companies, sell off their hardware company to a Dell-like company, and then continue with Palm OS.

The reason this is the best solution, in my opinion, is because the hardware is simple to emulate. PDAs are, in essence, small computers. I don't think they could ever win in a pure hardware market. However, their software is well advanced and has a huge niche. It has the advantage of being licensed to other PDA makers.

So with a software only approach, their only competition, virtually, would be Microsoft's Windows CE. On the other hand, their hardware would eventually be competing with dozens of competitors.

I think they will reverse split the stock, spin off the hardware division, and sell that part of the company. Then they'll remain as a software developer. Once that part of the business stabilizes, they will possibly diversify their products, or start writing software for their own OS. I really feel they can be the Microsoft of PDAs.