There is a battle going on for the the PDA/Tablet/Phonetop – among Microsoft/Samsung/HP/Dell/Palm and Palm and Ericsson/Motorola/Nokia. Of course, Palm is trying to play both sides using Windows Mobile as well as its own PalmOS. But what is even more intriguing is the stealth use of Linux and Java on the many different mobile combos. Check the following out – Maemo.org is the Nokia mobile OS in a tablet format … and it has uhhh .. well dont ask Nokia – a Linux base, and it uses a lot of Java technology.
One could go on and on with the various OS and VM combos – but the bottom line is that a First World War like Trench warfare is going on in the tablet/PDA/embedded space for the Consumer OS, UI and VM predominance as handhelds and consumer “appliances” go up the CPU+WIFI capability curve. And everybody awaits the Apple iPOD step. This is open warfare we havent seen since the days of Jobs, Gates, and IBM of the early 1980s.
(c)JBSurveyer 2006