In fact, the company is staking its future on competition among its third-party vendors and even with itself. And while Palm and Symbian both will provide technology for a new Nokia smart phone, true cooperation is unlikely, the sources say. Instead, look for more announcements like the one that OpenSky will make in the next few weeks. The service is provided by BellSouth and, like most North American wireless operators, that company needs some clues about how to appeal to Internet users. We spoke with OpenSky officials and they clearly are far more savvy.
Palm is gleeful at the competition it has fostered.
But Visor also could cut into sales of Palm-branded devices. That's fine, according to the spin Palm put on it last week. In addition, we learned that Palm will cope with competitive threats from its licensees by restructuring the company into hardware and software divisions. Now, we have to hold ourselves back so we don't compete with licensees. Put differently, expect Palm to compete fiercely with Handspring and other licensees.