Comments on: Why Pre is the right move for Palm

Company became a leader in the smartphone field overnight. No small accomplishment, considering that no real demo units have been sent out and a mass launch is months away.

[MaLvaDo39]

Palm will use an HTML web standards-based developers kit???

Apple started the iPhone this way in 2007 and was ridiculed. Now Apple has in place actual apps; not just widget-like JavaScript applets as Palm is announcing.

How exactly does Palm's 2-year late announcement impress anyone?

[kris240376]

This isn't exactly the same thing. All of the apps that Palm showed at CES were actually developed using the very same web kit they are offering to third party developers. From what I've seen, those applications seemed quite polished and were actually installed onto the device.

What Apple was trying to do with the iPhone was make developers deliver apps to their device over the Internet via the Safari browser. This was ridiculed because applications didn't have physical access to the hardware and ate up battery power as you were actually surfing the Internet to get to your applications.

[blakghostSP]

idiot!!! it does have an sd card and slide out keyboard please read more (-_-)
the main thing of this phone is it can multitask that alone is why i want it
palm is known for giving what the ppl want also sprint has no data caps as far as i can tell and i burn data and if you think surfing burn data go jump i run shoutcast endlessly in a day i run gigs so keep your carrier i love sprint

Smartphone no matter what can do anything there is no class for them
windows, google, Palm, apple, All can do all!!! its how that is the question!!!

[blakghostSP]

here this is for the ppl that cant do things for them self

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html#tab2

[CDubber]

"In short, Palm went from a company that nobody cared about to a leader in the smartphone field overnight."

"Leader?" Really? Palm definitely has all the media attention right now, but "leader" is laying it on pretty thick. Let's wait and see what happens when they actually ship a working product. And rest assured in the meantime, their competitors won't be standing still.

I still find it ironic how Palm hasn't been savaged by the press for its non-native application development environment as Apple was with the original iPhone. I expect Apple to have some significant iPhone software updates in place by the time the Pre actually ships - and the iPhone is already becoming a significant media and gaming machine (which drives consumer sales), something the Pre won't be able to accomplish based on their currently-revealed plans.

I think Palm arrived to the party too late to save it.

[Hellcat]

Knowing Apple they probably won't change anything about the iPhone. Apple doesn't do things that people want, they tell people what they want. Steve Jobs probably looked at the Pre and just shrugged his shoulders and said "we're #1".

I hope the Pre lives up and even exceeds the hype because I do think Google watched and will make changes to the Google OS. Microsoft might have taken notice and we still don't know much about Windows 7 mobile. I saw some video on youtube and wasn't really impressed. The Pre on the other hand just blew me away.

[mike.gw]

Good for Palm! Will be looking to see if Exchange e-mail support has been licensed and built-in, as Apple did with the iPhone 3G and it's 2.0 software.

[msanto]

Specs on the phone say EAS support, so yes.

[msanto]

The rumor about the pricing has been modified. It seems that was "unsubsidized" pricing. The new prices are more reasonable (natch, still a rumor): $149 or $199, depending on market conditions at launch.

http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2009/01/palms-pre-149-199-subsidized.html

[Get_a_life_Leo]

$399 on Sprint would kill it dead but the key is whether Pre will be available unlocked. If so, $399 is very reasonable and would allow the company to attract any phone user who is near the end of their contract and who wants more control over their phones. There again, this wouldn't be so useful without a SIM based GSM-network phone (which surely will be the variety sold outside of North America).

As for loyalty, so many people are forced to be loyal to their provider. Not because they want to be, but because the provider ties them in. This stifles true competition.

The Pre is not a grand slam. It has gotten Palm out of the dug out and onto the deck. It still needs to hit the ball - how far will depend on how it executes over the next 6 months. It certainly has the hype and momentum associated with the iPhone, but RIM and Apple are unlikely to be snoozing by the time actual product is available.

[mike.gw]

CDubber, anyone who builds a good product in this field can shoot to the top quickly. There is no loyalty with cellphone users. If the device is small and stylish, works well and connects to e-mail and contacts on a desktop or server, many will give it a look. There is no smartphone manufacturer that has the field locked down the way that Microsoft does with it's Windows desktop OS. On a smartphone, your typical user is not looking for application compatibility, as long as they can get access to games and utilities for their phone. The biggest advantage I see out there for Apple (I own an iPhone, owned Treos and WinMo phones too) is the iTunes Music Store and App store. These stores and iPod functionality are the dominant areas for the iPhone. That's a combo that will be hard to beat, but hey, competition is good!

[Get_a_life_Leo]

What about 2 year contracts? Unfortunately, this form of enforced loyalty coupled with network exclusives tightly constrains uptake. Palm may have been in a better position if they'd offered an unlocked phone but they clearly needed a launch network (at least in the US).

[fusillijerry]

ok, so MaLvaDo39 is absolutely right. The press needs to read pre-iPhone launch comments about how unsatisfied developers were with the HTML-only environment. Now Palm wants to make a "store" out of what should be free web content? What the heck are you guys smoking. I know there's nostalgia for Palm (I owned many), but even though the new OS is slick, there are numerous terrible uses of screen real estate that will have to play out when the device ships. Read the reviews and the hype will dim, I bet. Palm needs a miracle, and this may or may not be it.

[Synthmeister]

Palm Pre may be a great product but does Palm really have a great business plan, developer program, ecosystem partners and the financial clout to wait until it actually starts generating a positive balance sheet?
Remember, this thing still has four to six months to go before it ships. Apple will probably have iPhone 3.0 ready, (30 miilion users, already second place worldwide) Android is finally ready to ship one than one variation, MS is still throwing gobs of cash at WindowsMobile and RIM is producing more and more consumer oriented products. (Nokia thinks open sourcing Symbian will be their salvation but I'm not so sure about that.)

Meanwhile, Apple's App store is on a FASTER growth trajectory than the original iTunes store, and is generating it's own weather systems at this point, at least for the developer community.

Remember BeOS? Remember the Foleo? Palm frittered away precious resources, developer interest and most importantly, time with projects like those. Now it's two or three years late to the party, trying to set up shop when all of it's competitors have paid off their mortgages, hired all the reliable help, locked in rock bottom supply deals and sold their customers two year subscriptions.

Palm better have a mountain of cash ready to ride this competition out. Just having a great product won't cut it.

[seven7dust]

well said, but palm isn't aiming to become as popular as the Iphone
it's a way of saving the company from bankrupcy !

But I dis-agree with MS throwing money at Windows Mobile !
all they r doing is probably stating their photo-copiers
but r confused as to whom to copy !
Windows mobile should be dead as soon as all the Android phones and Pre release !

[scaught78]

The part that people seem to forget....and this is a big part....is SPRINT. Sprint is the sinking ship of the telephone world and with good reason. I for one could not get out of my Sprint contract fast enough. I would frequently get dropped signals, bad reception and a great deal of billing errors.

To me, the Sprint connection is a major major hurdle.

[BmeyerKC]

Are you serious? Don't just buy into the hype that Sprint is sinking. Sprint may have slipped back in the race, but I can't find anywhere that says they are in last place. Sprint has to many other things going for it that other carriers don't. Maybe you got burned because some punk kid with a bad attitude told you off on the phone. Sprint has learned from that and is working to improve their customer service. It has made leaps and bounds. Billing, I will agree with you, they had/have some issues with data intregity. Keep in mind the amount of options Sprint has that other companies don't. Trying to maintain different plans for corporations, small business, individual, family on two different networks (Sprint and Nextel) isn't easy.

Sprint may have fallen behind, but they aren't sinking.

[sweaty_taco]

You should believe everything you hear or read. I'm curious to know what that "good reason" is exactly.
I have Sprint in the Bay Area, CA and it works great. PLUS I get 450mins for 39.99 and 10 for the data plan. That is a great deal.

[sweaty_taco]

I meant "shouldn't" believe everything you hear or red, not should. My bad.

[roadlife]

"PLUS I get 450mins for 39.99 and 10 for the data plan. That is a great deal."

Sure, but you are not allowed to get the Pre on that plan. the required plan for Pre will nearly double your costs.

[sweaty_taco]

" Sure, but you are not allowed to get the Pre on that plan. the required plan for Pre will nearly double your costs."

Is that a fact or a guess?

[SteveW928]

I guess we'll see...
I think the Palm V was pretty much the pinnacle of their previous achievements. All down-hill from there. Can they recover with the Pre? I guess I'd have to use one for a bit first to see. My Treos (I owned a couple models) were pretty much junk. Little better than the Palm V as a PDA and horrible as a phone (which should have been its strong suit).

The reason I'm skeptical, is because of the idiotic statements the Palm CEO made when the iPhone was announced... saying that Apple didn't stand a chance. It shows how out of touch he and the company were. Maybe they have learned. I'd have to really play with a Pre though to see if it indeed is a whole new smart-phone experience (which the iPhone is).... or just another kludged-together gadget with lots of 'stuff' like previous Palm products (or most Windows smart-phones).

[checodaman]

650 VZW user here...God, please dont take more than 90 days to go to Verizon...not sure if I can stomach Sprint. I do live in an urban area where 3G is strong but...yuck.

[gerrrg]

What Palm did was an incremental improvement over existing technologies, not some stunning engineering.

Analysts, get over your drool.

[dimethol]

One question remains on my mind when I read this.
How is the battery life on this new device? I can't seem to find any spech's on it. And with the last two new devicesPlam came out, treo 800 and Pro, their battery suxed. So im just wondering with all the bells and whistles Pre is suppose to come with would it actualy hold its charge?

[AppleSuxLeo]

Palm said certain partners ( who really know what they are doing) are going to have access to the kernel , which is Linux based. Those apps are not just widgets.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Game Changer !
It`s not just that Pre multi-tasks but it is the way it does it and the way you can so quickly open and close apps. The Synergy itself is brilliant. All the updates are pushed out over the air...no need to connect with iTunes while at a computer. This phone is what web 2.0 is all about. Makes the iPhone look plodding and childish. One easily multi-tasks with a PC/Mac and it is also easy to multi-task on the Pre. Job`s demo now looks foolish compared to this. The wireless inductive charging , the gesture area...I could go on and on but the Pre will sell itself.

[scott2400]

Interesting that you should use the words "plodding" and "childish". Methinks your Freudian slip be showing!

[wiredchicken]

Why couldn't they come out with the palm Pre through AT&T and not Sprint??? Who the heck uses Sprint anymore, its a totally irrelevant cell phone company. Thumbs down to Palm!! They made a very bad move going through Sprint and not AT&T (or even Verizon)!!!!

[checodaman]

I suppose it had to have made business sense. Palm calculates how much money theyd make selling phones in the 90 days (or so) if ATT/Sprint/VZW all offered the Pre. Sprint then offers them garunteed money to withold the phone to Sprint only for 90 days. This probably isnt the exact model but you get the idea.

[samasas]

There are lots of people who use Sprint and with current layoffs be prepared for tmobile and sprint to steal lots of current ATT and Verizon customers. Also Pre to be launched on Sprint is business decision as well as ethical. Sprint helped them when ATT and Verizon were sucking Blackberry and Windows mobile with their lifeline Palm OS based treos and centros. As per business, AT&T and Verizon cared less about Pre as they already have (they think they do) best of crop where they allure customers (Iphone and Storm). They spend so much on advertisement that they wont support Pre launch. Now Sprint on other hands spent tons of money on instinct to compete with other smartphones but with great ad campaign and response they know instinct is no smartphone. So with Pre Sprint got their top of the line phone that will push people to change companies. And Sprint got their own interest in launching Pre successfully and draw attention. For Palm its good way to pay back kindness Sprint showed them for being gennie pig for all their new phones and in return get more money back, get free publicity and then release the Pre broadly to major networks around the world. Also Sprint is not as restrictive to pass features as ATT and Verizon are.

[garment69]

Meh. No memory expansion? Hmmm, I seem to remember Apple getting killed for that (and righfully so). Slide out keyboard? Pass.

[blakghostSP]

it does have an sd card and slide out keyboard please read more (-_-)
the main thing of this phone is it can multitask that alone is why i want it
palm is known for giving what the ppl want also sprint has no data caps as far as i can tell and i burn data and if you think surfing burn data go jump i run shoutcast endlessly in a day i run gigs so keep your carrier i love sprint

Smartphone no matter what can do anything there is no class for them
windows, google, Palm, apple, All can do all!!! its how that is the question!!!
[CNET editor's note: Personal attack deleted.]

[roadlife]

"idiot!!! it does have an sd card and slide out keyboard please read more"

Calling people an idiot when they are right and you are wring is, well, idiotic. It has no SD card.

[sahilk]

"Why Pre is the right move for Palm"
...And going with Sprint as the main CDMA carrier is the wrong move...

[Kontracnet]

"Pre's introduction, website, technology packaging, industrial design, UI, product naming and positioning...down to the flow of its CES presentation were pointedly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Apple-like. Of all the current iPhone competitors, Pre clearly captures the 'soul' of the iPhone as much as any product not-from-Cupertino can. Whatever Pre 'borrows' from the iPhone, it does so not with the brazen indifference of recent iPhone-killers, but with care and purpose."

However:

"Palm is clearly late to iPhone's party. By the time the first Pre is sold, the iPhone will likely have 30 million users in 70+ countries, 15,000 apps, a huge developer and peripherals ecosystem, perhaps a third of the market share and 40% of smartphone revenues. And that's before the next generation iPhone device and OS are introduced."

I explored Pre's chances in:

"Strategic shortcomings of Pre in the post-iPhone era"
http://counternotions.com/2009/01/12/pre/

[AppleSuxLeo]

As for the iPhone:

It's much slower; Rubinstein and his team say that's because the OS X code is not lean enough to run swiftly on a mobile device's relatively tiny processor and small memory footprint. And you can only do one thing at a time.

Apple introduced OS X for its personal computers in 2001, but pieces of the system trace their roots back to the 1980s, when they were used in the operating software of computers made by Jobs's other computer company, NeXT. Palm sees an opportunity to come out with something newer, better and?perhaps most impressive to gadget geeks?faster. A lot faster. "We're already four times faster than the iPhone, and we're still optimizing," McNamee boasts.

Palm expects people will keep 15 to 20 applications open at the same time.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Jon Rubinstein=New Steve Jobs