Palm's struggles in 2001 mirrored Apple's downward spiral in the mid-1990s. Pressured by intense competition from Microsoft, Palm decided to license its operating system to startup Handspring and sundry other manufacturers, including Sony.
The unintended result in both Palm's and Apple's cases was a cannibalization of sales rather than an expansion of the platform's market base. While Handspring and Sony were able to invest resources in developing innovations beyond a basic model, Palm was left to oversee both operating system development and hardware revisions.
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