TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

People who have attended one of my talks on mobile phone security (e.g. Confidence, SIGINT, IT Underground) already know why carriers don’t particularily mind theft – after all, a stolen device means that the former owner will buy another one (often at outrageous OTC prices). AT&T has now taken this bullshit one step further.

According to the Boy Genius Report, AT&T will now offer an insurance plan:

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The insurance plan, which will be run by Asurion, will carry a price tag of $13.99/month and will be available for purchase through Apple’s App Store. The charges will be billed to the credit card on file with Apple. … You must enroll in the plan within 30-days of upgrading/purchasing a new iPhone.

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Let me explain the reason for the outrage further: each and every GSM-based network contains provisions for keeping “unwanted” phones out of the network – the so-called EIR database (an element of every GSM network) always contains the provisions for IMEI blacklisting. A carrier can ban any phone from its network by simply adding it to the database’s blacklist.

Given that Apple and AT&T could easily gang up with law enforcement and eliminate the resale value of stolen devices, I consider it socially outrageous that the two now start to peddle insurance. But it makes sense economically – after all, if your iPhone is stolen, you’ll likely buy another one anyways.

Just think about market share and sell through…

Dear Readers, I love you all! Thank you all for talking back about my recent post re the Pre overclocking issue. Please allow me to clarify something here.

The passage that most of you took offense on was this:

Given that Palm never did this before, it IMHO is highly likely that the Pre has severe thermal issues, which would be exaggerated by raised CPU frequencies! This means that an extensive computing session could quickly lead to a toasted Pre.

Please allow me to explain a bit more. Every object has a “thermal capacity”; which we can imagine like a bucket for water. Heat is dissipated to the environment (water out of the bucket), and it can also be produced from electric energy (water into the bucket).

Obviously, a healthy device would always have an empty bucket/steady water level as all heat gets dissipated – and the Palm Pre also has that. Your Pre’s work flawlessly at 800MhZ – but this does not mean that it will work so for everyone.

Let’s, for a moment, assume the following: you are on a train (aka bad wireless signal), are charging the aged battery (extra heat dissipation), tethering to a PC which downloads Windows Updates, have BT on and – finally – play a 3D game.

Let’s go on to assume that the amount of heat generated is just a tiny teeny bit more than what can be dissipated. This means that the bucket fills up slowly but surely. It might take hours, but it might just happen.

For knowledgeable users (who see that their box is hot and turn it off), this is no problem whatsoever. But lets now put the Pre into the hands of a dumba$$: he could fry his Pre, theoretically hurt his hands due to the high temperature, and sue.

Palm could theoretically have worded the statement as: this is not for dumb users who have no common sense. However, dumb users are offended easily…which is why Palm chose the wording which they used.

Hope to have this cleared up now!

Palm’s recent situation has caused quite a bit of Sprint bashing: if the Palm Pre had launched on Verizon, blah, blah. While I can fully understand the annoyedness of Palm stockholders, I think that Sprint is not the culprit.

We must keep one thing in mind at all times: when the Pre launched, Palm was considered dead meat!

Verizon, AT&T et al would have kicked their a$$es out of the front and back doors when suggesting a new product there. For them, Sprint was the only company which was willing to wager a bet with their new product…and it actually worked out decently well for them. Bad advertising did of course take its share at f%%king up the launch, as did the insane delays and quality problems. However, these issues are in no way Sprint’s alone – and are, in fact, more of a problem of Palm than of Sprint.

For me, Sprint plays an integral role in the success of Palm: keep in mind that many (Japanese) manufacturers manage to make a living off a single (Japanese) carrier. Given a lean organizational structure, Palm could live off Sprint alone! Pissing them off thus is not a good idea…

For me, Sprint is not part of the problem, but rather part of the solution – what do you guys think?

We hear rumors about large device manufacturers buying Palm every odd week – and most of them are bogus. After all, why should a manufacturer give up on its successful OS?

TamsPalm reader Robert now shared an interesting theory:

Oh let me add one more company to my list…Qualcomm. They make many of the components for phones already, if they bought Palm then they can make the phones cheaper because of this.

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Yes I do think they have the money. If you open almost any cell phone you’ll see something thats Qualcomm. Would they want to? I’m not sure. It would make sense as would the other companies I mentioned, but I only hear rumors of companies that already have OS’ that are doing well.

It may be a little-known fact, but QualComm’s BREW operating system is used more widely than you think. It has even made inroads into basic smartphones – but is not really suitable for these devices.

For QualComm, webOS would be a smash hit. It is flexible and can adapt to various screen sizes easily; it drives data usage due to its “webby” nature, and is pretty powerful too.

Thus, QualComm buying Palm would make sense – the question is whether they have the money.

What do you think?

Roaming has recently caused quite a bit of headlines due to EU intervention – the EU commission used its power to topple over free-market prices on roaming (info for US readers: the EU has powers which significantly exceed those of the federal government).

While I am not against this in any way, I think that it will not solve the problem. The solution will IMHO come from another side – traditional, former governmental carriers.

If you look at Austria, you see our former governmental carrier is in a terrible mess. Outdated Ericsson transmitters consume insane amounts of electrical power, and over 4000 employees who can’t be fired make operations unaffordable. Small and agile carriers like Hutchison have fun f##king them over here and over again…

But: A1 also has some strengths. For example, a law required by the carrier was passed by the government within 7 days – Hutchison was lobbying for the same law for ages. Furthermore, A1 is a member of a large global alliance similar to the Star Alliance in airlining.

Hutchison has offered free roaming in its networks for ages – but as it has but 7 countries covered, the offering is of limited value. A1′s alliance, on the other hand…you get the idea…

Thus, I see the solution coming from somewhere else. If legacy carriers are pressured enough in their home market, they will look offshore in an attempt to find value.

For A1, offering “global roaming” is a question of an email or two (they already do it for governments and large entities). This would then lead to closer cooperation between smaller carriers (see Airberlin and Hainan)…

What do you think?

P.S. Orange has already started the trend by giving its customers complimentary free minutes to call phones all over Europe…

Just in case anyone of you has still been living under a rock: the Apple tablet has just been released, and it will be called iPad (not iSlate). Those of you needing a bit of technical information can find it below – the rest of this piece will look at the reasoning behind the box.

Hands-on with the iPad
Price information

First of all: the folks at Palm’s will likely jump over their house door backwards three times. The iPad is no danger whatsoever to their new devices – no multitasking and no keyboard mean that the device is almost unusable for business. Other manufacturers don’t have to worry either…

Apple’s iPad also doesn’t target the existing tablet PC crowd: these devices also cater to a completely different audience. Business folks and note takers are not the target here…

When it comes to mobile usage, the box also can’t achieve much: it is too big to be truly portable, and offers too little to replace a notebook. So no cheese here, either.

Instead, the iPad is a passive media consumption box. It is a large personal media player more than anything else – users are expected to take the critter to bed or to the couch and look at TV, do some casual web surfing or listen to music. Active input will take place someplace else.

The device thus ties in perfectly into Apple’s existing ecosystem, and will likely sell like the AppleTV did. But it IMHO won’t have much of a lasting impact on the mobile world as whole…

What do you think?