The Palm platform which is still leading in sales volumes faces today the necessity of fundamental changes caused by the pressure of the strongest competitor - Microsoft Pocket PC. The pocket computers based on the latest OS have wide integrated multimedia capabilities and are ready to play audio and video files of the popular PC formats once they are fished out of the box. The best Palm compatible devices are able to offer only a built-in hardware MP3 player which is not a part of the platform (by the way, it was the Sony's initiative, not that of Palm) - it's a useful gadget sometimes excelling software solutions, but it has a narrow range of application. There was no general multimedia solution for Palm OS till recently able to play audio and video in any of the current formats and which can be updated in future Palm OS.
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