Last week, one of the bigger news in the tech industry was that two archrivals, Palm and Microsoft has teamed up, and Palm would soon be licensing Windows Mobile for its future Treo Cell phones. Thus the end of the intense rivalry between these two companies which has been running for nearly 8 years. I have used more than 7 PDAs going back a few years, and feel qualified to tell you my version of this colorful story which I have closely followed?

Ever since I far back as I could remember, I have been using organizers to try to work out my schedules, my contacts, and my to do list, as well as meeting notes. I was a user of Casio and Sharp organizers back when it could store no more than 200 phone numbers. But it just did not work out, and every year, I would try to get one of those executive planners to start out my year, and it would be a hell of a time trying to transfer some of my contacts, and appointments.

Then almost 9 years ago, around April 1996, there was this organizer called the Palm Pilot. Instantly it took the world by storm. It was handy, it was easy to use, and it had enough memory to actually be useful. And it had a handwriting recognition system that was which was fondly called Graffiti.

Palm practically popularized the devices we now fondly called the PDA. Within 18 months, it sold over a million devices. And for a while, it was almost a near monopoly. Microsoft then had its play also on these devices and it was called the Windows CE. I had both, and Palm was the easier to use. Microsoft CE devices were clunky, and did not integrate with the computer very well. Most of all, Palms was not only faster and simpler, it had batteries that lasted for weeks, while Windows CE would conk out after a day or two.

It was cool to have a Palm, much like it is cool now to have an IPod. Thus started Palm?s amazingly colorful history ( where it changed names, merged, spun off, merged, spun off a couple of times). Palm was sold to US Robotics, which later was sold to 3Com Corporation. It was part of the company till Palm became a sensation, and 3Com decided to spin it off. For a while, Palm Corporation had an enormous IPO, and it was even valued much higher than 3Com itself. Of course, that time, Microsoft was just entering the market, but Palm was confident. One of the top executives, Ed Colligan ( who is now Palm?s CEO) said in an interview with Fast Company Magazine, that he has only one job ? to kick Microsoft?s butt.

Meanwhile, the founders of Palm, Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, exited the corporation, and went on to organize HandSpring, which produced the Visor, which was also running the Palm Operating System.

Later, the founders rejoined the company when HandSpring and merged to form PalmOne. Then they decided to split the company to a software group ( PalmSource), and the hardware (PalmOne). PalmOne went on to also make cellular phones, the Treo series, and now is licensing Microsoft mobile for its phone business.

If this sounds confusing, it is, and in my opinion, this confusion could have been also the reason of the slow decline of Palm where it used to hold more than 90% market share five years back to slightly lower than Microsoft?s Windows Mobile since last year.

However, this is not only a story about Palm?s rise and fall, but notwithstanding it also gives us important lessons in technology competition, particularly with Microsoft. Did Palm do something right, or was it Microsoft?s positioning that eventually allowed it to gain, for now, victory of the PDA OS wars?

Competing with Microsoft is certainly not easy ? the industry is full of once proud companies that is now victim of it ? from WordPerfect in Word processing, Lotus in Spreadsheets and email servers, Novell in network software, IBM?s OS2 in operating systems, Go in Pen Computing, Corel in Desktop publishing, Primavera in Project management, Borland in development tools and dBase, and Netscape in browsers. Still fighting are probably Sony in gaming, Oracle in databases, Google and Yahoo in portals, email, and search, and QuickBooks in small business accounting.

So now, Palm embraces Microsoft, which together with Apple now using Intel processors are two of the biggest partner change for this year.

For sure, Microsoft is a formidable competitor, not because it is so focused, but because it also has almost infinite resources to keep throwing up the ante until you practically run out of bullets. However, I think also one of the things doing Palm in was also that it did not sense much the development of changing consumer taste.

It won the hearts of customers initially because it was easy to use, but they should not have stopped there. Continuing to develop new features and parameterization is almost a must, and this is what Microsoft almost excels in. Most of their products had been clunky at the start, and seemingly too much preoccupation on backward compatibility, product cross integration as well as future expansion may mean that it will be off at the slow start, but competition on tech is not about who blazes the fastest, but who endures, and Microsoft is certainly a competitor that plans for a marathon, and it is important that you should too.

The Palm OS should have transitioned from ease of use to multitask, which after several years, it still is not able to do well. When coupled with a cell phone, when you want to make a call, and check your appointment, or write a memo at the same time, it just loses out to Windows Mobile which is a more powerful counterpart. The software development tools needed to continually make more sophisticated software for it was also not available.

I have also used some open source software, and this might be something that would compete with Microsoft again over a long term. However , most of these software are made by small teams which focuses on the now, instead of the future, and many of these utilities lack the sophistication or adequate testing or the long term commitment ( save for a few applications) to handle really mission critical task, widely diverging use, or to bet the company on. I think the software future will continually depend on the winning company being able to continually add the sophistication , while still making it easier to use which is something that up to this moment, most companies still don?t have the experience and focus that Microsoft does. Many open source applications are developed, but not maintained very well. Some versions have not been touched, or upgraded for some years, except for some minor tweaks by users. Evidently, software that is not maintained will lose out in the long term ? just like a marathoner who do not replenish their energy or water in the body.

The tech industry is a marathon, and he who endures, win. In an industry where the next quarter is too much of a preoccupation, Microsoft is one company that gives comfort that it still has a five and 10 year vision, something which is very important for users.