Merlin to strike another blow to Palm

The latest release of the Merlin OS will strike a serious blow to Palm's market leadership as businesses lap up new security features.

That's the view of Forrester Research, which conducted a survey of FTSE 500 companies and revealed that more businesses plan to switch to handheld devices and away from Palm products.

Currently, 60 per cent of companies support Compaq's iPAQ, 25 per cent support HP's Jornada, and 50 per cent support Palm handhelds.

When asked about their plans for 2003, only 38 per cent expected to still be supporting Palm, while the 63 per cent and 28 per cent still expected to be supporting Compaq and HP's Microsoft-based handhelds respectively.

New features, like an easy-to-deploy Virtual Private Network client built into Microsoft's operating system, were seen as the key to the success of the Microsoft-based manufacturers.

Handhelds are currently seen as a security hazard by many IT managers, a perception that Microsoft was at pains to address in the designs for the new generation of its Pocket PC operating system, codenamed Merlin.