Palm and Window Mobile

Enterprise Editors Duncan H. Brown (outgoing) and Nathan Clevenger (incoming) had the chance to ask Tara Griffin, VP of Enterprise Markets at Palm about Palm's Windows Mobile devices and where Palm's going with them.

Tara Griffin, Palm's Vice President of Enterprise Markets

Was your existing user base disappointed when Palm offered a Windows Mobile device?

We have a great loyal customer base; we thank them all the time for their support. On our side, we get up every day and ask, "How can we delight our customers?" Adding a Windows Mobile device to our portfolio of products opened the door to new and existing customers who prefer that platform.

How does Palm see the impact of its Windows Mobile devices in the Enterprise markets? Are they more appropriate for Enterprise markets than Palm OS devices?

Both OSs are being used by business customers large and small. We've encountered companies that have chosen to standardize on Windows. Now, we can offer them the ease-of-use experience of the Treo on a platform that complies with their standards. Customers who would have never considered a Treo are now considering a Windows Mobile Treo. We're offering them that choice and they're delighted. Palm has benefited greatly by offering a broad portfolio of choices that meet the needs of a broad range of customers.

Is there a thought of creating a Palm Windows Mobile Smartphone, that is, a device without a touch screen, etc.?

We are in the business of offering a portfolio of choices, and we're constantly studying the market and what we can contribute to it.

How do Palm's Windows Mobile devices compare to the competition? Will executives carry Treos instead of Blackberries?

We have innovated on top of the Windows Mobile OS to bring Palm's ease of use and great user experience to users.

We are all about choice. We offer both Windows Mobile and the Palm OS platforms. Regarding e-mail, we support POP3, IMAP, Good Technology's solution, Blackberry Connect, etc. With Blackberry Connect, organizations that are locked into the Blackberry server are free to choose Treos. We're all about fitting in to existing infrastructure.

We're also all about e-mail, but beyond e-mail we allow customers to take their critical applications and adapt them for our devices. We have a vibrant developer community that we've been working with for years.

What direction will Palm be taking with Windows Mobile? Do you think you have it the way you want it, or do you see ways to do it even better?

We take customer feedback very, very seriously. You'll see that as we offer more and more products we'll build in more ease-of-use and more powerful simplicity. We don't add features in order to check them off on a list; we want to make the user experience embraceable, usable and powerful.

Will Windows Mobile become the OS of choice for Palm?

We want to offer our customers choices. We build on open standards, whether form-factor, OS, carrier, or the choice of e-mail solutions. We're building gold-standard devices known for their power and simplicity.

What types of line-of-business applications are you seeing deployed on the Treo?

We're seeing a broad scope of vertical and horizontal applications being used on our devices from sales force automation and customer relationship management to healthcare and distribution. We're seeing all kinds of different customers using them for many different purposes.

For example, we've seen nurses in the hospital or out in the field accessing medical records, scanning a patient's barcoded bracelet to confirm they're getting the correct medication, and sending test results back and forth. Treos have been used by professional services in finance, legal, insurance, and real estate, to access email, business-critical documents, and applications as well as to capture and share data.