Smartphone Battle: Blackberry and Treo Go Head to Head

Using the Windows Mobile platform as the foundation, Palm and Microsoft feel they’ve reached a "winning formula" for business, according to Suzan DelBene a corporate vice president of marketing for the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft.

The combination Harnett says, will "provide a powerful tool for enterprise customers."

Behind all this, Vodafone will be providing the medium that the voice and email will travel over. The Treo will be the first to ride on the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System network) promising speeds of up op to 3mega-bits - about twice as fast as standard residential DSL.

New OS

The new relationship with Microsoft means that Palm is essentially cutting ties between its Treo smartphone and the device’s long time partner, Palm OS.

Though the Palm OS has proved adequate for PDA's and similar products, it has been unable to adapt to emerging trends and has been plagued by mismanagement. The latest iteration, Palm OS 6, included licensing problems and poor security, among other drawbacks.

Left with an aging operating system, customers moved on and Palm OS's market share went down from 65 percent to about 7 percent, according to Todd Kort of Gartner Research. In fact, sales of Palm OS smartphones, other that the Treo, have fallen to "negligible levels."

It may have been hard to say goodbye, but experts feel it is a step in the right direction. The limitations of the PalmOS hindered Treos from being serious competition in the enterprise market. Kort contends, however, that "the Windows Mobile OS in its smartphones should improve [Palm's] enterprise market position."

The new Treos offer Windows Mobile sport multitasking, protected memory, and better security than Palm OS's. This translates into getting more work done, with more peace of mind. Palm even remembers what made the PalmOS successful and enriched the interface with tweaks making things faster.

The most notable outcome of this partnership, however, is the development tools associated with Windows Mobile that Palm will be able to integrate. The new software will enable enterprises to build applications beyond basic wireless e-mail, and integrate those applications with back-end systems that will in turn work with their Treo's.