
Palm, Once a Leader, Seeks Path in Smartphone Jungle - nickb
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/technology/20palm.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
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cmos
A good start, but filling the place up with apple people isn't a magic
cureall. (i.e. there were apple people at apple in the 90's.. just no Jobs)

They lost the battle. Time for an aggressive plan B to stay in business.

If I were in charge of plan B I would do the following:

\- The Centro is a great concept - come in at a far lower price point and grab
an untapped market. Now tie it to online services (myspace, hulu, facebook)
and get them to brand and sell to their end users.

\- It's all about the software. Realize this. Focus on making a few killer
applications that people like versus the ultimate operating system that your
never going to ship. ($12million for BEOS???)

My 3 killer applications would be:

\- App1: Keeping family's connected and in touch with each other could be a
large market. Build the 'family' phone that has the dots of where everyone is
and a 'feed' that let's everyone know what they are doing. Don't make it lot's
of disconnected apps. Let me press a 'dot' and send a text message, or call
the dot.

\- App2: Gaming. But on a large scale. Come up with intricate gaming concepts
that become more fun with millions of users, all connected, with a small
screen and a GPS.

\- App3: Live social network. There are apps for detecting friends nearby and
such, but none built into the phone. Make it simple and behind the scenes.
Have phones that then target specific demographics, like the teen male/female
markets. Build a twitter into the background of this. This would be like the
family concept, but feed off your favorite social network(s). Why can't I text
you from your myspace page? (built in, not some addin hack a computer person
puts together)

Rim has the business people. iphone has the upper middle class. Take
everything beneath them.

~~~
silencio
RIM and Apple (and others) aren't explicitly the reason (imho) why they don't
have "everything beneath them" e.g. lower class/non-business users. It's the
price of the plan and not the devices that are a bigger detraction. There are
plenty of blackberries that are free with contracts in the US and used/first
generation iPhones are available for very cheap outside of contract. It's the
plans that cost the most overall, and that's something RIM and Apple don't
necessarily have pricing control over. That means that it's pretty likely that
if someone doesn't already have a smartphone, either they don't feel that they
need it, they feel that they cannot afford it, or a combination of both.

Even personally I suppose you could class me as middle class, and I've had an
iPhone since the very first day. I still resent what I'm paying and wonder if
it's worth it. Not the phone itself, but the price of the plan which is
currently in the neighborhood of $40 just for the 3g data and 500 text
messages. $40 could buy a regular voice plan with many minutes for someone who
has no need for data.

If that is the case, Palm pretty much are screwed because if people could
afford something like a Centro (with a plan) they are no doubt going to
compare it to a RIM or Apple device at some point, _even if the Centro is
free_. Palm has nothing to offer that's particularly enticing over the rest of
the smartphone market.

Now onto the three killer apps: App1 is something lots of phones can do in
concept already - not necessarily what you mention, but say, if I wanted to
text someone I just called on my iPhone it's something I could select from the
phone menu to create a new text message. And vice versa - on the top of the
text message I just received from a person is a button I can press to call
them. Plus they share the address book.

App2 is something the iPhone is surprisingly kicking ass at, except for the
connectivity. A fun game doesn't need to be intricate. My favorite game for my
iPhone is de blob, and its just twisting my iphone around and around getting a
blob to bump into buildings to color them. :D Also judging from the reaction
from the location services on the iPhone, some people are going to seriously
resent a GPS enabled game/social network. Take for example Twinkle, which is
(right now) a Twitter client for the iPhone. If you check out the nearby
feature, it's pretty scary. I've come across more than a few creeps that way,
and it's one reason why I'm not using Twinkle even though I want to.

App3 just fragments the already fairly fragmented social networks available
now. The best bet would be to just get all the big ones on board so people can
pick and choose. It wouldn't be the best the phone has to offer, but
personally I'd rather access twitter and facebook separately than deal with a
network for people who have iPhones (for example) and only them.

------
gamble
It's amusing to see Palm try to save itself by becoming more like Apple. Palm
is in the position it is today largely because it followed all the dubious
advice pundits heaped on Apple during the 90s - split the company into
hardware and software divisions, license to 3rd party manufacturers, buy
Microsoft's operating system...

