Comments on: In wake of loss, Palm looks to Pre as savior

Revenue and earnings plummeted in the quarter that ended before the Palm Pre went on sale, but execs expect the new smartphone to spur a revival.

[brynn08]

@ jjg-713


lol your right....."mr cap" is definitely on steve jobs sack.....phone lovers who apprecaite great technology know what a great phone the pre is...apple fans boys are hilarious !!!!

[SweatStudio]

I've had my Palm Pre for about 2 weeks now and couldn't be more happier. Best feature for me is the multi-tasking capabilities along with the physical keyboard in which I now type 40 wpm with only a few errors. This is a great product SHOULD have the potential to sell millions within a few months. However, product success and longevity is all about marketing and money. If you consider the Nasdaq market caps, Apple's is 100 times more larger than Palm's. Apple has many successful products such as their Macbooks and Ipods so expect the iPhone to stay and succeed.

Apple has done a great job on creating loyal users. I tried to show my clients and employees my new Palm Pre's features and the ones that were iPhone users already made their decision that their iPhone is better without even attempting to look or demo the Pre. Eventually many Pre users will have a mutual feeling with their product and perhaps within a shorter period than when the first iPhone was first released. Don't forget that AT&T is a big factor on why people will defend their iPhones as well because who wants to pay a $200 early cancellation fee to switch carriers? All and All I do believe the new iPhone 3Gs is a great phone and I can see why people would buy it for some of it's specific features.

The Pre's WebOs is a remarkable system but we must remember that not everyone is gadget savvy and perhaps multi-tasking capabilities are overkill to some user's needs. To sum it up: If you are not doing frequent business tasks and looking for a great cool entertainment phone with web and multimedia functions, get the iPhone 3Gs. However if you are a busy business person that wants to make their day more efficient, the Pre is most likely going to be the gadget for you. Plus the Pre has cool web and multimedia functions as well.

Re: Apps
50,000 iPhone Apps vs. 40 Pre Apps? The Pre's SDK is circulating and I'm sure you'll see thousands of Pre Apps within the next few months. Let's not forget the power of Mergers and Acquisitions, it seems that this subject overlooked in all the comments above. I happen to know a few people in this field and you should never underestimate the possibilities. Let's think outside of the box for a moment. If you do research on Dell Computers, what kind of impact would it create if Dell were to purchase Palm? Who would of thought that Microsoft would produce the Zune player to compete against the IPOD? Does Microsoft sells phones??? Google has G1 and Android, but it seems that Google has the power to buy almost anything these days? Isn't this a great opportunity to acquire a growing successful product such as the Palm Pre?

Bottom line: The Palm Pre has been great so far and I want the company to strive so they will develop better upgrades and of course, APPS! However, with Apple's power and market share, I would expect to see another new iPhone within the next year. RIM and other companies may have a competitive product too. So Palm needs the Pre to be a success and they definitely need to beef up their staff including marketing to keep up with all the big guys. I'd love to see a 2nd Generation Palm Pre, wouldn't you?

[TextMailManiac]

Great comments. I think it's interesting to see how intensely bullying Apple and its customers can be when they're in the #1 market share position. If Microsoft was as obnoxious to Apple in the PC business, there'd be hell to pay.

Ultimately, to win out, Palm, RIM and others just have to stay the course. Apple is arrogant and overbearing -- they will **** off enough of their developers in due course. They did it to the Apple II developers and drove them to MS-DOS. They did it to the Macintosh developers and drove them to Windows. Palm and Android will doubtlessly benefit when the next "must have killer app" is produced for their phone by a jilted Apple iPhone developer who dropped iPhone after Apple "rejected" his app for some ridiculous reason.

Then, we can listen to the wailing from Applestan and say things like "it's all about the apps, and Pre has 20x as many as iPhone!" ;)

[kelmon]

I don't see the Pre as the device that will save Palm but I do see it as a platform that will stop the decline of the company and give them the ability to reverse things over time with future products build on the webOS. Since many people seem to want to compare Palm with Apple, consider the Pre as Palm's iPod - the original device didn't sell particularly well but it went on to spawn a family of devices that really helped Apple out of the hole they had dug for themselves.

launch pre on verizon and at the same time world-wide.... palm needs to race-up really really fast... webOS despite at a very early state works very well but competition is picking up as well.... android is gaining ground like crazy with samsung and htc with its "sense" UI - just stunning and more android devices coming....

[polarbebe]

I think the Pre is way overhyped by the media just to sell articles.

If you look at it from a purely business standpoint, Palm has a difficult road ahead. They are competing with Google (Android), Microsoft (Windows Mobile), Apple (iPhone OS), RIM (Blackberry) and Nokia for developers for their platform.

A smartphone is more than an internet, clock and a calender. Its kind of like a laptop if I can use that analogy. No one will buy a laptop with no programs, similarly people will not seek to adopt a smartphone with no apps. A smartphone with no apps has little added utility beyond a feature phone.

With the Pre having only 30 apps, and the smallest established base of users (estimated around 150,000) competing against tens of millions established users on the iPhone and Blackberry and millions of users on Android already, developers will not be running over themselves to spend venture capital money on the smallest platform base supported by the least financially stable company (Palm).

Palm as you may know had a stock price of less than $2 before the Pre announcement and had to get a $450 million dollar capital injection from Bono (of U2) to save the company.

Consumers should look at the big picture, not running after the newest gadget. Look at what happened to the format HDDVD, Blu-ray won. The market can support 3-5 smartphone platforms, I don't think there are enough developers that it can support 6 (Android, iPhone, Windows, RIM, Symbian, WebOS).

In several years time, 1-2 of the smartphone platforms will go under due to lack of developer support. If you look at computers, the general public can only support two platforms, Windows and Mac OS. If you look at gaming systems, there are only 3 platforms. There are simply not enough developers, especially as these apps get more intensive and more difficult to program.

[SweatStudio]

Motion Apps has just announced a compatibility program for the Pre. This application called "Classic Applications" will allow the Pre to run 30,000 applications or at least find compatibilities with most of them. All this news is "Pre" mature so I'm going to hold off and wait for more assurance before I attempt to install it to my phone. This is good news to hear and it's a good start. I'm glad that aggressive action is being taken and eventually, I wouldn't be surprised in the near future the Palm Pre may have more than workable applications than the iPhone.

[coolmdj]

The Palm Pre is really a great phone that offers different ability's than the Iphone 3GS. And in a lot ways is a much better phone than the Iphone 3GS. People need to understand that this phone is a first generation phone and it beats the Iphone 3GS in every aspect. The Web OS platform is the beginning of something powerful that is in the Palm Pre. I believe once their is a lot of applications for this phone then people can really appreciate all the wonderful things that this phone can do. Move over Iphone there is a more powerful phone on the block and it is the Palm Pre.

[brynn08]

hey polarbebe....stopp using the whole apple has 50,000 apps.....iphone had none when it first launched in 07.....ur just another ignorant iphone user