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A Look at Palm's Latest OS

gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#31

Post by blub »

mikedouglas wrote: post #15
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'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones. If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what mar…

That doesn't mean that smartphones can't get better & cheaper, displacing some of the feature phones. Smartphones are ~26% of the entire market, I'll give you the source for that tomorrow.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#32

Post by jmtulloss »

glhaynes wrote: post #27
enjo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Palm's on Verizon and AT&T now, as well as a bunch of other carriers outside the US.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#33

Post by athom »

mikedouglas wrote: post #15
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'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones. If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what mar…

Is that five billion individual owners? That's pretty impressive! Current estimates put the whole world population at just under 7 billion.

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html has it at about 6.8B, and a Google search on "current world population" turns up similar figures.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#34

Post by iuyhgtfvgbhjn »

athom wrote: post #33
mikedouglas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones. If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what mar…

Is that five billion individual owners? That's pretty impressive! Current estimates put the whole world population at just under 7 billion. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html has it at about 6.8B, and a Google search on "current world population" turns up similar figures.

Last stats I saw showed that for W Europe the average user had owned >5 handsets.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#35

Post by wazoox »

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 have a Pre plus, uptime is in weeks (out of updates, I had to reboot it only once in 6 months), and the interface is really far ahead for multitasking, and I multitask a lot with it; mp3 + web + contacts + an app or two all the time, and it rarely hiccup if ever.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#36

Post by jrockway »

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.

I don't think the enterprise cares about cost; they care about control. For example, my work blackberry requires a 10 character password (that's not qwertyuiop, apparently), and they disable changing the wallpaper, ringtones, use of the camera, and sending text messages.

Why? Because it's a checkbox, and clicking it seems like work. ("Yes boss, I did do a lot of work today. I ensured that nobody can steal our intellectual property by disabling the cameras on all the blackberries!" "Great work!")

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#37

Post by hexley »

wazoox wrote: post #35
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 have a Pre plus, uptime is in weeks (out of updates, I had to reboot it only once in 6 months), and the interface is really far ahead for multitasking, and I multitask a lot with it; mp3 + web + contacts + an app or two all the time, and it rarely hiccup if ever.

Umm, don't mean to burst your bubble but the iPhone could do all that from day 1, sans "multitaskin"g. Is this word now becoming as meaningless as "bricked"?

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#38

Post by mattmaroon »

vladk wrote: post #18

Palm/HP is in a tough spot, but it's possible for them to go up with a bit of luck. They need mindshare, solid hardware, and apps. The 3 are codependent. Good hardware and apps help mindshare, and having market interest and a good phone attracts app makers. If they mix their timing just right they could come in at third place behind apple and google. They are doing good things right now on the app front. More and mor…

Yeah, I love my Pre, but the hardware already feels dated. It's crazy how much progress is being made in mobile devices every year now, reminds me of desktops in the mid 90s. You buy one and feel like it's out of date a month later.

What really killed them was launching exclusively on Sprint. With hardware evolving as fast as it does, by the time it made it to Verizon and AT&T it was just no longer compelling. While I actually love Sprint, there are a lot more people on Verizon and AT&T.

I really think market share will take care of any lack of apps. More advanced hardware, a more attractive design, and a better marketing campaign would take care of that. I think HP has a real shot, though maybe my love of WebOS has me biased.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#39

Post by joeyo »

blub wrote: post #30
sandGorgon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might need luck if you assume that the industry is standing still and chips and batteries aren't getting cheaper and more powerful...

Sub-$100 Android devices that "run fast" are inevitable. The only question is how soon.

Re: A Look at Palm's Latest OS

#40

Post by bad_user »

blub wrote: post #29
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.

I think the biggest battles in the smartphone market are yet to come.

I have an iPhone 3GS and I love it, and while the iPhone is considered the best smartphone yet I see multiple problems with it ...

     - piss-poor battery life ... yes, I recharge it at night but there are days 
       when I forget about it ... the other Symbian-based smartphone I have 
       can last for 3 days - basically I'm not using the iPhone as a phone 
       (too unreliable)

    - no replaceable battery

    - the UI paradigm is lacking in areas Microsoft / WebOS / Android seem 
      to address ... those app icons are taking valuable screen estate without 
      much usefulness 

    - valuable applications aren't properly integrated with iOS ... I have the    
      following apps: Skype, YMessenger, Twitter and Facebook; and none 
      of them are saving contact info in my iPhone's contacts. This is one area 
      Windows Mobile 7 seems to be addressing

    - the notifications are really fucking disruptive ... it 
      interrupted my TowerMadness game multiple times :)

    - for developers you need OS X / Xcode for development, 
      and this can be a PITA. WinMo7 probably has the best developer tools 
      available.

    - iOS has Game Center, but Microsoft has the XBox console market and 
      XBox Live upcoming in WinMo 7. Depending on their implementation, 
      the XBox Live integration can be groundbreaking.

    - WinMo7 will probably have the best Office integration you can get on a 
      smartphone.
And I don't own an Android phone, but I see lots of fragmentation problems and poor management of the marketplace.

Bottom line being: lots of areas where iOS / Android could be improved, lots of room left for competition.

Don't count on Microsoft / Nokia being dead, yes big corporations are rigid and have a hard time changing directions, but they still have lots of resources, lots of talent and the duty to reinvent themselves when the shit hits the fan.

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