A Look at Palm's Latest OS • Hacker News Board

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#21

Post by rimantas » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 5:27 PM UTC

iuyhgtfvgbhjn wrote: post #14

irons wrote: post #12

As difficult a situation as Palm is in, I was reading that article thinking Nokia is in far worse shape. WebOS remains just a promising also-ran next to iOS, Blackberry, Android, and presumably WP7, but MeeGo doesn't even rate mentioning, and Symbian is a walking corpse.

90% of potential cell phone customers aren't looking for a smartphone, they don't currently have any sort of phone and guess who makes all the cheap waterproof rugged phones. hint - the next billion customers don't live near Apple stores.

hint: you don't make much money selling dumbphones, no matter market share.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#22

Post by enjo » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 5:56 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #5

meowzero wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it came to the market too late. It had a lot of potential to be a solid #3 competitor in the mobile space behind Android and iPhone. I think their main problem was their crappy hardware they put the OS on.

I'd say it came to the market too late to not have huge marketing behind it . I bet we'll see Windows Phone 7 which is far later do much better (at least in terms of market share/units shipped). Yeah, crappy hardware hurt badly, too.

But it did have tremendous marketing behind it. I saw those very creepy Palm commercials all over the place. Hell we had a huge Palm banner hanging in Downtown Denver for like 6 months.

I think Palm suffered from a serious issue with brand identity. It just seemed like people weren't sure what those phones were supposed to be exactly. Were they blackberry competitors? After all, they had a really crappy keyboard. iPhone competitors? The form factor would suggest otherwise.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#23

Post by pkaler » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 5:59 PM UTC

HP/Palm have one possible advantage: bundling for the enterprise. Give away a Palm phone with each purchase of a PC by corporate accounts.

Apple essentially does this in the consumer market. MacBooks and the iPod Touch get bundled together during back-to-school season.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#24

Post by billybob » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 6:01 PM UTC

megaman821 wrote: post #16

henry81 wrote: post #9

I have a Palm Pre.. I got one early on, was a huge fan, but now I fully believe the platform is dead. All you ever hear about is iPhone or Android. That aside, the Palm experience totally sucks. It would be amazing if the phone didn't freeze on me while trying to view a webpage and listen to an MP3 at the same time. No, that's asking too much

I don't understand, this article is talking about the future of Palm devices. You don't think a faster OS and newer hardware will fix a couple of freezes when multitasking?

The question is "who will they fix them FOR?" If the parent poster's experience is typical and nobody cares about this OS, improvements to it are irrelevant.

Personally, I'd like to see Palm OS stay in the fight. I like the stack UI concept they discussed here, and anyway, competition is always good.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#25

Post by mattparcher » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 6:26 PM UTC

pkaler wrote: post #23

HP/Palm have one possible advantage: bundling for the enterprise. Give away a Palm phone with each purchase of a PC by corporate accounts. Apple essentially does this in the consumer market. MacBooks and the iPod Touch get bundled together during back-to-school season.

Not a bad idea. Of course, corporate phones require significant support and build-out of infrastructure, whereas a consumer device just works, but RIM made a similar move with their buy-one-get-one-free offer in Spring 2009 for Blackberries, and it apparently helped to boost their (consumer) market share by 15%:

http://news.cnet.com/blackberry-curve-outsells-the-iphone-3g...

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#26

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 6:51 PM UTC

The idea is to link windows by task, rather than by the application that runs them.

To me, this is a profound idea. It's the same thing that "Code Bubbles" does for developers.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#27

Post by glhaynes » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 6:51 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #22

glhaynes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it came to the market too late to not have huge marketing behind it . I bet we'll see Windows Phone 7 which is far later do much better (at least in terms of market share/units shipped). Yeah, crappy hardware hurt badly, too.

But it did have tremendous marketing behind it. I saw those very creepy Palm commercials all over the place. Hell we had a huge Palm banner hanging in Downtown Denver for like 6 months. I think Palm suffered from a serious issue with brand identity. It just seemed like people weren't sure what those phones were supposed to be exactly. Were they blackberry competitors? After all, they had a really crappy keyboard. iPh…

True, good point. I amend my earlier statement to be "huge good marketing".

Also, I assume that Windows phones will be on (nearly) all carriers, whereas Palm was (and is?) stuck on Sprint in the US. That's worked out OK — though we'll never know how much better it could have possibly gone — for Apple, but for various reasons, including lateness to market with a broadly desirable smartphone, I don't think that's been as feasible for Palm.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#28

Post by dagw » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 7:03 PM UTC

irons wrote: post #12

As difficult a situation as Palm is in, I was reading that article thinking Nokia is in far worse shape. WebOS remains just a promising also-ran next to iOS, Blackberry, Android, and presumably WP7, but MeeGo doesn't even rate mentioning, and Symbian is a walking corpse.

I recently needed a second phone for work and bought a cheap Symbian phone, and I have to say was very positively surprised. Half the price of the cheapest android phone, MUCH better battery life, really easy to use for calling and texting, yet still has wifi, GPS, browser etc if you ever really need them. In fact I'm starting wonder to if cheap symbian phone plus iPod touch (or Android equivalent) isn't a better overall solution than buying the latest high-end smartphone.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#29

Post by blub » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 7:19 PM UTC

irons wrote: post #12

As difficult a situation as Palm is in, I was reading that article thinking Nokia is in far worse shape. WebOS remains just a promising also-ran next to iOS, Blackberry, Android, and presumably WP7, but MeeGo doesn't even rate mentioning, and Symbian is a walking corpse.

It looks like Nokia is the next to die after Microsoft's demise three years ago.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#30

Post by blub » Thu, Sep 16, 2010, 7:21 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #17

iuyhgtfvgbhjn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of potential cell phone customers aren't looking for a smartphone, they don't currently have any sort of phone and guess who makes all the cheap waterproof rugged phones. hint - the next billion customers don't live near Apple stores.

You are wrong - the next billion (or two!) live next door to China, from where we are seeing the emergence of the first sub $200 (full, unlocked price) phones this month [ http://www.priceindia.in/tv/spice-mi-300-price-%E2%80%93-che... ] That price figure is going to fall way, way lower once the Android supporting Mediatek chipsets enter full production [ http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semicon..…

Good luck getting Android to run fast on a low-powered 100$ device.