The fact that the latest Palm OS v.5.4 has not been upgraded for a number of years has not been helping things for the operating system, at least in the enterprise market, said Info-Tech's Levy. 'The Palm OS has basically reached a dead end and the Treos that run on a Palm OS will not be upgraded for the foreseeable future.'

PalmSource, maker of the Palm OS, was acquired last year by Japanese mobile platform developer ACCESS Co. Ltd. While PalmSource, and now ACCESS, have been working for years to come up with a follow-up to the Palm OS 5, 'they are still nowhere close to actually delivering a workable product,' he said.

'Increasingly, users who have been using Palm OS-based devices to run enterprise applications are now looking very strongly at Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0-powered devices and thinking that it's time to make the jump,' said Levy. He added that Palm Inc. 'cannot plan a mobile device roadmap based on an operating system that is obsolete and whose replacement does not exist.'

The new Palm 700wx smart phone is the second Treo device that runs on the Windows Mobile platform; the first, Treo 700w, was launched in September 2005.

Treo 700wx is now available through Bell Canada's high-speed mobile network (1xEv-DO). It features several 'out-of-the-box' enhancements from its predecessor, including increased RAM capacity from 32MB to 64MB.