
Why the Palm Pre Will Fail - jasonlbaptiste
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3822361/Why-the-Palm-Pre-Will-Fail.htm
======
ssharp
I've been saying this all along. I still don't understand why everyone got so
excited over the Pre demo at the CES.

The UI doesn't look as intuitive as the iPhone.

Multitasking sounds good but how well will it work? Apple didn't "overlook"
multitasking. They saw that it would be a nightmare in implementing it while
maintaining their usability standards and decided against it. If the Pre can't
multitask efficiently, it's a useless feature that does more harm than good.
And push notifications may be enough for Apple to compete in this area.

QWERTY keyboard. The "big" defense against the iPhone. Having come from using
a Blackberry for several years before switching to an iPhone this year, I can
say that the virtual keyboard wasn't an issue at all. I'm not sure if the
extra bulk of a physical keyboard is necessary, especially if the keys are too
small.

SDK - Web O/S sounds "sexy" but it isn't. It's not nearly as powerful and
capable as the iPhone's SDK. If you thought the App Store had a lot of noise
in it, wait until you see the nonsense that gets churned out by Pre
"developers". Which brings me too:

App Store - This was the killer feature of the iPhone v2. The built-in phone
interface and integration with iTunes was killer. And the ALREADY ESTABLISHED
popularity of the iPhone was enough to convince big time developers (and the
small guys) to invest the time into developing for the iPhone. The Palm
doesn't have this luxury. How well the Palm interfaces with it's app store and
how well it integrates into synching with a computer remains to be seen. I
doubt the Pre will have anywhere close to the quality of apps that the iPhone
has.

Hype - Hype (and killer demos) brought initial conversions for the iPhone to
AT&T. The quality of the phone continues to bring them in. The Pre doesn't
have this level of hype. In the tech sphere, it has hype, but nowhere close to
the iPhone. And outside of the tech world, it's a big nothing. And Palm
doesn't have the money Apple had to market their new phone.

Release - When the iPhone released, the "gold standard" was the Blackberry,
with great email, and awful internet browsing. The iPhone changed the
smartphone game. Now everyone has consumer smartphones. The Pre doesn't change
the game. They are just doing the same thing as everyone else. They have nicer
features but it's not enough to shift markets like the iPhone did.

Some of the minor features - Cut and paste. Never a big deal for me that the
iPhone didn't have it. I can think of maybe 3 times in the past year that I
wanted to copy and paste something. Once again, on a pure touch phone, cut and
paste probably wasn't easy to do without hurting something else. The new
iPhone software supports it and it's adequate enough.

Price - iPhone wins by costing $200 out the door. Not a $300 price with a $100
mail in rebate. And if the rumors are true that the 8GB iPhone will be dropped
to $99, it's goodnight Palm.

~~~
halo
I disagree.

The UI looks great. In fact, I think it's better than the iPhone's in many
ways. The calendar, contacts feature, the merging of conversations across
different platforms, and the universal search are all great, for example. It
all seems super-slick.

Multitasking looks great, and it's a massive oversight in the iPhone's
featureset. The fact that you can't run a MSN Messenger client or a streaming
audio application in the background, for example, kind of cripples it. The
fact that Apple hasn't managed to do it doesn't mean that the Pre can't, any
more than the fact that Internet Explorer Mobile didn't mean that the iPhone
browser was crap. The card interface in particular looks fantastically
intuitive and deserves all the praise it gets. On the other hand,
"Notifications" are simply a poor substitute from proper multitasking
functionality. I think Apple will reveal proper multitasking, possibly
exclusive to a next-gen iPhone, over the next year.

People are divided over the QWERTY people, but it's undeniable that it some
people prefer physical buttons. In particular, the audience that Palm are
likely aiming at, which is primarily business Blackberry users, prefer
physical keyboards. I don't think trying to differentiate itself from the
iPhone will do them any harm though.

I've not used the SDK, but I understand their approach. It's a trade-off. It's
not very useful for real-time applications like games. However, web
applications are becoming more and more popular, even on the desktop with
applications like AIR. Whatsmore, people know HTML/CSS/JS tech (particularly
compared to Objective-C), and that makes it easy for them to encourage people
to develop applications on their platform, even if it remains a niche. It
seems like a reasonable trade-off. I'm not convinced games are really that
important either, the case in point being Mac OS X users.

The iPhone has a leg up over the Pre in sheer quantity of applications. On the
other hand, long did Palm OS and Windows Mobile. And Windows still does over
Mac OS X. It doesn't really matter as long as there's thriving communities on
all unless there's one single-platform "killer app" which can't easily be
replicated on the others, which currently doesn't, and is unlikely to, exist.
All that matters is that there is a thriving developer ecosystem.

Hype doesn't have to equal to sales, as Blackberry and Nokia have shown by
outselling the iPhone in the United States and Europe. It's also worth adding
that if Palm sell half the amount of units that Apple do, they'd probably be
celebrating in the streets and their share price would rocket. Palm's measure
of success is almost certainly not anywhere near "beating the iPhone".

If we measure success by innovation and "X did it first", Opera would be the
most popular browser on the planet and we'd all be running BeOS right around
now. Being a "game changer" really doesn't matter in the long-term.

The price is higher. But it is a brand new phone with a brand new operating
system, and they likely want to charge early adopters more. I doubt Palm are
going to choose the Apple pricing strategy of keeping the price static for
months or even years, and are more likely to compete in price as time goes on,
especially when their exclusivity agreement ends and if they remain the
underdog.

There's also other reasons. The fact it's on a different network to the
competition works in its favour - not everyone has a choice of having good
coverage for all the networks. The lack of a removable battery has likely
discouraged corporate users from the iPhone. The DOC/PPT/XLS and PDF viewer
will appeal to corporate users and is a nice touch. I regard avoiding iTunes
as a big win. A decent camera with flash is a nice touch too.

~~~
rimantas
"I'm not convinced games are really that important either, the case in point
being Mac OS X users."

Well, take a look what kind of apps take the top spots on AppStore. However
the most amusing thing in this kind of discussion is a take on SDK. When Apple
initially offered to develop apps using web technology it was greated with
"booo". Now Palm says the same and it is greated with "Wow, cool". Go figure.

~~~
halo
I believe Apple were perceived to almost dismissively offer remote web apps
which require internet access as a replacement for local apps with access to
APIs, and it quite obviously is not a very good substitute.

On the other hand, Palm are offering their web development platform as a
first-class platform where the applications look, act like, and feel like
native applications, as well as providing full interfaces to local APIs.

I don't think games are that important. The Sims sold 16 million copies, but
no-one bought a PC simply to play The Sims. I think the same is true for
phones - for the vast majority of people it's a nicety rather than a true
selling point.

------
lallysingh
Pretty good linkbait.

sprintf(&article.title, "Why %s Will Fail", new_trend[i].title);

The analysis here on HN is 10x better than the article itself.

~~~
kyro
These types of comments are getting pretty old. Ironic 'cuz they're karmabait
and fall inline with a stupid trend here on HN.

print "Pretty good linkbait. Another %s post." % made_up_trend

~~~
lallysingh
Indeed, but how else do we fight off linkbait? I'm not sure it's worth
flagging, but it's still not a good article for HN.

------
peterlai
"The Pre runs the brand spanking new webOS. Big IT shops want stability and
compatibility, but Palm changes operating systems like underwear."

This author doesn't seem to understand the implications of having a web-based
operating system of the quality that the Palm Pre promises to deliver.

In my opinion, here is a better evaluation of the Palm Pre's business
viability: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10234043-94.html>. This author
also questions the phone's ability to win business users. At the same, he
acknowledges the advantages of it's new operating system and a provides a fair
evaluation of its UI.

~~~
rbanffy
The author also forgets Palm stuck with good old familiar-to-developers PalmOS
for more than a decade. Most apps I had on my Pilot 1000 ran flawlessly in my
Palm Centro. The rest of their stuff uses Windows CE.

------
rman666
Why will the Pre fail? Number one reason: Palm. They've messed up every
product they've had. Heck, they should be iPhone. Look how much of a head
start they had. "Palm" is a household name. I wish them the best of success
with the Pre, but I'll be surprised if they can make it a success.

------
boundlessdreamz
Palm Pre has a better chance of becoming a success than other devices which
tried to unseat iPhone

* The UI looks extremely good and intuitive. This is the biggest factor in people like iPhone. Blackberry and Nokia though that adding a touch screen to their existing clunky interface is sufficient but it was not be

* Verizon will carry Palm Pre in 6 months. This is really big. verizon is huge and has much better coverage than Sprint or At&T. They have been losing some customers to AT&T due to iPhone. Pre will allow them to stop that slide and offer a real competitor to iPhone. This is a win-win for both Palm and Verizon. Many were of the opinion that the biggest weakness of Pre might be its sole association with Sprint. If verizon backs Pre, it has a huge potential to be a hit. [http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN283374932009...](http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2833749320090528)

* Palm Pre Will Sync With iTunes: The feature will be built right into the device so you don’t need any third party software. But it won’t be able to play the songs you bought from iTunes Store as they have DRM. [http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/28/fortune-palm-pre-syncs-flawle...](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/28/fortune-palm-pre-syncs-flawlessly-with-itunes/)

------
drawkbox
Right now Apple has the developers, that is a good predictor of success. Not
saying Apple won't mess that up badly (speaking from desktop slip-ups).
Android is going about it the right way, developers. Mobile of old was not
good with giving developers access. Palm was part of that old problem.
Handspring was actually one of the first I remember that had a good app
culture.

Anyways, unless Pre attracts developers it is just a phone. The iPhone is
almost another new gaming market and that is just one facet of the developer
attractor.

------
marcofloriano
It´s hard to predict. I don´t believe that Pre will take the place of the
iPhone, but fail !? Bah, far from that ...

------
TweedHeads
It won't fail, but it will be in a distant fourth place after iPhone, Android
and Blackberry in that order.

------
swombat
Good analysis. Pardon the pun, but it sounds like the Pré is Prétty fucked.

Of course, I speak as an iPhone afficionado, so I'm probably one of those
irrational Apple fans that just won't buy the "better" phone.

~~~
jawngee
Why do people purposely limit themselves due to an irrational allegiance to a
brand? An allegiance that you pay for the privilege of having.

Isn't the ideal that our choices always produce the best results? So why would
you choose the counter intuitive of picking the worst result?

Curious.

PS. Not saying the Pre > iPhone, but your statement is rather ... strange.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Same reason I like Nissan vehicles: their design decisions tend to resonate
with me and I've had good experiences with the ones I've owned. I can't be
bothered to research everything out there, so if I'm in the market for a new
car my first inclination would be to see if Nissan makes something I like.
Then I look around to see what else is similar and switch away only if there
is substantial benefit.

