While I don’t fully agree with all of his positions, Anders definitely is right about one thing: there is no second chance for Palm. With money from Palm OS products falling off a cliff and Windows Mobile competition getting stronger than ever (Treo Pro…haha), the folks can not survive on their self-generated income.

If the Pre fails, Palm is as good as dead. There probably won’t be another webOS device if the Pre doesn’t sell (extremely) well…which is a fact I am not too sure about.

While the Pre definitely is an amazing (and very daring) piece of technology, I am not sure if there will be many Palm OS heads waiting to upgrade to this device due to lack of upwards compatibility.

Palm’s fate will decide itself in the next six months – and it will be prosper or perish. The time of stasis is over for good…

What do you think? Which device would you buy?

Informations:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html#tab2

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

]]> http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2009/01/14/palm-pre-vs-iphone-3g/feed/ 6 http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2008/10/27/why-palm-is-the-weakest-link/ http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2008/10/27/why-palm-is-the-weakest-link/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:17:41 +0000 Tam Hanna, Site Founder http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/?p=3378 A recent report by Standard&Poor’s names Palm one of the few companies endangered by the current sub-prime crisis. I personally am not surprised – here is why I think that Palm is the worst possible place for money invested into mobile computing.

We best – ignore industry trends
In the last years, Palm has repeatedly ignored industry trends. As an example, let’s take proper web browsing. Insider sources have told me that Opera repeatedly approached Palm with an offer to create a web browser for the platform…only to be ignored.

Palm seems to live by the NIH syndrome – if it’s not invented here, it sucks.

We don’t need money – ignoring the Palm faithful
While we all agree that the PDA is a dying breed of handheld, I wonder why Palm doesn’t offer a step-gap solution for its customers. HP still offers PDA’s, and furthermore offers smartphones that combine big rectangular screens with a keyboard and a phone.

We gamble – betting all on one form factor
Continued from above: if Palm wants to make smartphones only, why do they have to bet it all on one form factor. Yes, the Treo is well-done – but it takes many phones to make a world. Why not offer a touchscreen-only device, a flip phone and a slide-out keyboard one?

This diversification of the platform would make selling Palm devices (and the Palm experience) much easier. Instead of forcing customers down one road, why not let them choose which way they wish to go?

We great – kicking third-party developers in the butt
The final – and very grievous – topic involves Palm’s handling of its developers and enthusiasts. Web sites like the PocketPC FAQ have existed for ages; developers have created PocketPCfoo apps enhancing the operating system.

Palm, on the other hand, feels that this is not needed. In fact, it even is impossible to advertise products for Treo on AdSense nowadays – if that isn’t an effective way to slow down the Palm ecosystem, what is?

In the end, it all comes down to the age-old problem of self reflection and proactive management. Palm’s management seems to lack both capabilities: the company’s recent life can be described as luck and turmoil (IMHO). Palm needs to refocus on its old core values of “being the platform that works best” – unless they do that quickly, we can IMHO short their stock…

What do you think?

Actually, GSPDA’s G18 was very popular in Austria and Germany – it was sold by a mail-order house called Quelle. The company never managed to capitalize on this, and thus was largely forgotten about. A second attempt was made by licensing the M68 to Hagenuk: the S200 sold well, but Hagenuk chose to retreat from the “crowded” cell phone market(quote from the CEO).

Interestingly, many Palm OS freaks never heard about the company and its products. But what what went wrong? Product quality wasn’t too much of an issue after the G18 – why did nobody ever hear about the GSPDA M70, for example.

The reason for this IMHO lies in GSPDA’s corporate culture – the guys absolutely didn’t care about public relations of any form. No press releases were sent out, no press contacts were available. In fact, Theo Poon once managed to grab hold of a rep at a tradeshow – I contacted them asking for a sample and was rebuffed after about two weeks:

Sorry for my late reply. Regarding the M70, sorry that it’s difficult for us to send a sample outside office.
However, we are eager to provide you any information about this M70.

Please let me know if you need any information.
Thanks very much.

As nobody actually used the device, developers remained unmotivated to support the machine’s special features…

The final straw that laid the camel flat came in the form of naming issues – the M70 displays Palm powered when starting up. Unfortunately, Access no longer owns the brand name…and Palm Inc probably wasn’t too motivated to tolerate a competitor.

Folks: I am perfectly aware that a bunch of freaks isn’t enough to keep a company alive. However, enthusiasts are useful as they generate noise and media exposure. If GSPDA would have invested a few hundred dollars a month in keeping its devices in the spotlight of online communities(the average monthly ad rate is about 50$ per news service) and would have provided samples (loaners) to interested reviewers, the company would have fared a lot better…

What do you think?

Apparently, the orange folks never did too good a job at enforcing their policy – all recently-released Palm devices have fallen significantly below the list price very quickly.

Seeing Palm give up this policy is great from my point of view – it shows that the orange folks finally start to understand that they are not Apple(even though they have many ex-Apple employees ). Having list prices that are sky-high and rock-bottom over-the-counter prices(sometimes as little as 50% of the official MSRP) is a very bad sign IMHO…and seeing Palm understand this definitely is a step in the right direction…

The Treo 755p continues to be a strong product offering in Sprint’s lineup of Palm products which also includes the Centro and the Treo 700wx. Sprint has not discontinued the Treo 755p from its smartphone portfolio, however, we are currently addressing temporary outage of inventory which is why the handset is not currently featured as part of our online store at www.sprint.com. Sprint plans to continue offering these handsets and investing in new Palm products throughout 2008.

TreoCentral goes on to state that Sprint has had inventory problems – this could mean either insane popularity of shipment errors in Palm’s manufacturing process.

Anyways, responding to reader comments about Treo 680/755 vs Centro: folks, it is not a matter of going slimmer, less heavy, etc. For me, a device must have a minimum size to be used comfortably – too small a keyboard makes typing a pain in the neck. This is why Palm’s Treos have shrunken so slowly – in fact, most BlackBerry’s are as wide(but less thick).

The Centro is a device that appeals to casual users(irregardless if they purchase them or get them from corp IT) – people looking for a serious business device will look at another manufacturer’s (bigger) offerings…and this is where developer’s come into the equation.

Casual users do purchase software – but not the kind of software TamsPalm is writing about. They go for cheap Java games(ah, sorry, Palm hasn’t got a Java VM anymore); love heart indicators and flashy logos – stuff that established companies aren’t very much into…

The Palm Virtual Developer Lab (VDL) program is an online service that provides access to real handsets on live worldwide networks remotely via the Internet. Palm makes VDL available for global mobile software developers creating prosumer, business and services software solutions targeting the Palm pre-release device portfolio.

24×7 early access to network activated pre-release devices for faster time to market and reduced testing costs
The benefits of a real device in your hands – without waiting for a real device
Full test and debug capabilities
Experiencing your solution as your customers will on a real device
Improved accuracy of your test process through record/playback test capabilities
Ability to reserve devices to fit your testing schedule
Reserve the device in advance
…
Mobile Complete offers the Palm VDL as a subscription-based service. Monthly packages are available.

This program now is only available through the Designed for Palm Products Program and Palm Select Developer Program. Access to the Palm VDL will require an NDA/updated NDA.

Essentially, this means that now even more developers will gain access to Palm’s devices before they get released. For us, this is great in two ways:

First of all, it shows that Palm finally starts to care about its developers again, wanting to make sure that the user experience of the new devices is great right out-of-the-box(aka no issues with 3rd party software). This encourages users to later on try out more software and could maybe deliver a nice boost to the struggling Palm economy…

But it also means that there are now more opportunities for us to get leaked information about Palm’s new devices .

Jokes aside: great move, Palm! This is the way to go!

Hugh! Eish! Ed has spoken…and suddenly, the fossilized organism otherwise known as Palm begins to change…dream on.

An Austrian proverb says that a fish begins to stink from its head. Yes, true, correct – but once the whole fish stinks, gluing on a new head won’t fix it. But the problem IMHO isn’t Ed(he’s a smart and cool guy who IMHO knows what he does) – the problem is the tangled mass of people that work for the company he leads. A company that lagged behind years on bluetooth, hi#res screens and even simple color screens…this can’t be the fault of only the upper-level management.

About half a year ago, I met a higher Palm executive(can’t say his name…NDA e shit, sorry). I wrote about my encounter with him at PDA24/7 – and parts of it had to be censored for a variety of reasons. For example, he repeatedly boasted about how 60% of Palm’s employees were lesbian(cut out on PDA24/7)…

OK??? This is Palm, not a porn star loaning agency…what the heck? What do sexual preferences have to do with development prowess? With creating a kick-ass Palm OS II?

Anyways, inside of Palm, a culture of self-satisfaction has evolved which is similar to the snugness encountered among Austrian subject teachers who cannot be fired due to a weird legal loop hole in Austrian law(tenure of office termination on lack of performance). And – like with subject teachers – changing the boss doesn’t do much to change their attitude.

What Palm would need is a “reverse brain drain”…hire up good developers and put them into a Skunkworks-style environment along with your existing shooting stars to hack away at new products, undisturbed by the existing slurry of mediocre employees. Then, weed out badly-performing individuals and…just make the company lean and mean again…

What do you think?

P.s. If you wish us to get a response from Palm, please use the Digg This button above!

It appears that the WiFi team may be among the layoffs. (See Palm Sells 25% Stake.)

Our sources vary on exactly how widespread the cuts were to the team. One industry source says that the whole team has been canned. Another simply says that there have been layoffs.

A further industry source says Palm cut senior staff members, including the leader of the WiFi program and another senior engineer project manager.

“From our perspective it would be fair to say their WiFi technical team was decimated,” the source says.

It’s not yet clear how the changes might affect Palm’s WiFi plans. The company hasn’t replied to calls on the issue yet.

While most commentators have seen this as the end of Palm’s WiFi plans, I am not entirely sure about this. While Palm’s TX and TC handhelds have had pretty good WiFi implementations(for my taste), they still couldn’t quite keep up with Windows CE devices. So, someone at Palm’s could just have decided to “bring fresh blood” into the company by kicking out the existing WiFi people and replacing them with a new batch of people coming from another company(headhunted from, e.g., HP).

Palm managers have repeatedly hinted at WiFi coming to Treos eventually in the past, and ignoring an industry trend forever is a no-go thing too. In the end, Palm will not be able to resist the WiFi train forever…its only a question WHERE the software comes from(outsourced, vendor or custom)…

What do you think?

Most teens pirate software

I attend an austrian technology school – and am among the select few(less than 5 percent) who purchase their handheld programs legally. Most people around me resort to piracy – cracks are available in abundance, and piracy is rampant.

Essentially, the Gandolfini will be a device to attack Series 60 smartphones and Java dumbphones – and it’s content offerings will need to follow the same distribution channels. Either you get on MTV and scam em off with abonnements – or you don’t make significant money in this sector.

Of course, Palm could implement a heavy DRM system of some sort or the other – but I dare to doubt that, as it would make the device less interesting for its target clientele. Teenagers are not very inclined to spend money on software, and the ‘expensiveness’ of games&stuff can easily become a deciding factor for them. And since Palm’s primary interest is customer aquisition – we know who has to give…

What do you think?