Windows in your Palm(Treo)

Today at a press event in San Francisco, Palm CEO Ed Colligan, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, and Verizon Wireless CEO, announced a partnership between the three companies to bring Windows to a Treo device.

The news here is that Palm worked with Microsoft and Verizon to make this reality. Microsoft and Palm have competed fiercely in the past and now are teaming up to perhaps capture the market and gain more customers than they could working apart. It appears Palm is moving away from providing a mobile operating system to continue focus building mobile devices and applications. Microsoft is looking to capture more of the platform to increase sales of its server products.

Are we, the customers, better off as a result of this partnership? Only time will tell but, as always, I think competition provides better products for users in the long run.