
For Palm, Yet Another Wrenching Crisis - AndrewWarner
http://gigaom.com/2009/12/19/for-palm-yet-another-wrenching-crisis/
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watmough
I'd love to do some Palm development, but even the photo upload stats (recent
news on YC) show Android is the next best place to be, not that far behind
Apple (l)App(land).

On first play, the Palm WebOS is really nice, but if there's no audience, why
would I want to bust a gut developing and supporting an app.

So despite the Android geeky reputation, the Android emus are not actually
that bad. Not Apple levels of polish, but it has a rough sort of charm...
Though I do hope the actual phone runs faster than the emu on my iMac.

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sili
One of their failings has been a lackluster ad champaign. Ads for Pre are poor
at showing off any of the phones capabilities. More importantly, the market is
split between Android and iPhone with Verizon and AT&T acting as proxies. Each
of their ads implicitly or explicitly plays to that standoff. They ignore Palm
and Sprint as non-existent, and the later have failed to place themselves
somewhere within that environment as well.

Maybe the future for Palm would be to preempt Google and go without being
attached to any one carrier.

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rbanffy
I would risk saying that launching a phone that could actually function
outside the US would be a smart move.

Seriously: unless they can't build enough of them to cover for the lower than
expected sales, it makes no sense to neglect the rest of the planet as a
potential market.

Pre and Pixi compare favorably to both iPhone and Android offerings. I see no
reason to actively prevent sales on GSM markets. It looks downright dumb.

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sahaj
it's rather complicated to actually work out these deals. it's not as simple
as just deciding that you want to do it or not. also, palm is in pretty dire
financial situation, which makes things even harder.

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rbanffy
They wouldn't need the blessing of a carrier to sell an unlocked GSM version.

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sahaj
when was the last time a phone got popular because it was being sold without a
contract? most people are not able to afford it. also, it reduces the
saleability of the device to the carrier.

of course, this is a biz perspective.

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rbanffy
When was the last time a phone got popular because it was being sold with a
contract? It's more like they get popular regardless of how they are sold.

AT&T was considered a bug, not a feature, of the iPhone when it launched.

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davidmurphy
With the low number of apps, the good news is that good Palm Pre apps get
noticed a lot more easily.

There are opportunities to be the big fish in a smaller pond.

