
A Look at Palm's Latest OS - donohoe
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/a-look-at-palms-latest-os/?src=twr
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vladk
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 more good
iPhone games are coming to WebOS. HP is having a lot of their software
engineers spend a bit of time writing for WebOS as a sort of 20% project.

If they can get an exciting headset (not just good, exciting), and a marketing
campaign that puts it in enough impulse buying hands, then win those users
over with webOs + good app selection, they have a chance.

However, if they release a half hearted handset with little marketing, their
base wont' expand and it will slowly but surely fall into obscurity.

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mattmaroon
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 You buy one and feel like it's out of date a month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.

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irons
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.

~~~
iuyhgtfvgbhjn
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.

~~~
mikedouglas
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 market their fighting over.

[0]: <http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=4704>

~~~
athom
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.

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

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pkaler
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.

~~~
jrockway
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!")

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henry81
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

~~~
wazoox
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.

~~~
hexley
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"?

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wazoox
Wow, apple fanboi? I was talking of the fact that my Pre plus is fine, not
commenting on what other platforms do or don't.

That, and I despise Apple Walled Garden anyway so the qualities of the iPhone
are moot. And iOS 4 multitasking sucks, ergonomically. They messed up, even
multitasking on jailbreaked iPhones 3.x was better, though far from as neat as
the WebOS version.

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stcredzero
_The idea is to link windows by task, rather than by the application that runs
them._

To me, this is a profound idea. It's the same thing that "Code Bubbles" does
for developers.

<http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm>

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teeohhem
Great OS, but it came to market too late. Not to mention WebOS was half broken
when it was released. It STILL does not have voice recording capabilities,
which eliminates a ton of app-potential. I love it...but it is too little, too
late, Palm.

~~~
meowzero
I don't think it came to the market too late. It had a lot of potential to be
a solid #3 competitor in the mobile space behind Android and iPhone. I think
their main problem was their crappy hardware they put the OS on.

~~~
glhaynes
I'd say it came to the market too late _to not have huge marketing behind it_.
I bet we'll see Windows Phone 7 which is far later do much better (at least in
terms of market share/units shipped). Yeah, crappy hardware hurt badly, too.

~~~
enjo
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.
iPhone competitors? The form factor would suggest otherwise.

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glhaynes
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 as feasible for Palm.

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

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chrismealy
Looks like they reinvented HyperCard for 2010. I love it.

