Palm: The new comeback kid?

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Dealing with carriers who distribute the phones and competing against entrenched handset makers that are much larger than Palm are only some of the challenges Rubinstein did not face when conceiving of and building the iPod, Golvin said.

But there is little question Palm faces a tremendous opportunity. According to IDC, roughly 1 billion handsets will be sold in 2007. And less than 10 percent of those handsets will be smart phones. But that will change over the next few years, said IDC, which predicts that by 2012 or 2013, smart phones will account for about 25 percent of all handsets sold.

Increasing competition
Today BlackBerry is the clear leader in the smart phone market with its various BlackBerry phones. RIM, which up until recently focused exclusively on the corporate market, has expanded into what's known as the "prosumer" market. These are consumers who also want to use their phones for work, and expect to get e-mail and other multimedia functionality on their phones.

The BlackBerry Pearl was the first RIM product to make it into the prosumer/consumer market. And this year the company introduced the Curve, a multimedia phone geared toward consumers rather than enterprise users. Last year Motorola and Samsung introduced their own versions of the consumer smart phones, the Moto Q and the Blackjack, respectively. And Nokia, with its N-series phones, and Sony Ericsson, with its Walkman phones, have been selling such products for more than a year throughout Europe and Asia.

Palm, which introduced the new Treo 680 this year, has lost some ground to these competitors. Critics have complained that the Treo 680 only offers incremental improvements over older models of the phone.

Palm executives say they are already working on a new lineup of Treos. Even though Jon Rubinstein's influence on the product portfolio won't likely be felt for at least 18 months, McNamee said he is pleased with Palm's current product road map, which calls for new products on the market toward the end of this year and into early next year.

But in the future, McNamee said there is huge potential for Palm to innovate around its software.

"If you look at the industry over the past 12 months there has been huge innovation in hardware," he said. He pointed specifically to the Motorola Q, BlackBerry Pearl and the Samsung Blackjack, which have gotten smaller and thinner. "But now we're hitting a point where you can't get too much smaller without sacrificing functionality," he added. "We think the game is all about software. And software innovation is where Palm truly excels."

But catching the competition, especially Apple, could be difficult for the company, say some analysts.

"The iPhone has been very hyped," said Sean Ryan, a research analyst with IDC. "But it will have an impact on the market. It's particularly scary for Palm because they haven't diversified their design much, and Apple is also known for software development."

[xarophti]

Palm invented smartphone?

Although Palm did buy Handspring, in my opinion, it was Handspring who invented the smartphone when they made the VisorPhone attachment for the Visor PDAs. I'm still using mine on my Prism, and regret the day I'll have to give it up when all cell phone transmissions go digital. The main reason is text messaging - I hate playing "thumb piano" and the Treo does not support Graffiti.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

How to predict palm

If the future was startrek and you ask jordy or dr crusher if there was a place for palm right now they'ed tell you it nearly made it before others to being a triquarter.
When we do go to the stars if we make it(one does wonder at the moment) Its not going to be in some tin can trying to warp its way trough space (year what folds, i can swim faster than that with some space swimming gear). Anyway enough about sci-fi whats actually the most important factors here is how we go through the next 10 years really.

1) the midway market (how well and diverse will it develop) also (to simply make consumer communications and send office documents is going to be very competitive).

2) The way in which developers adopt linux or other os'es as to how they make use of technological improvements.

3) How well groups like Palm can capture the bread and butter markets and expand into professions alonside utilisation of technological developments.

So anyway where will this go thats the question.
Ok Palm can be developed on quite well and there are a lot of linux developers.

The mid-market both professional and simply lifestyle are heavly competed for and the most pratical aren't always used yet but however the market is moving from a toddler to a child/teenager market where binarary computing is concerned so there should be more need to make use of flexable development platforms how ever there are sharks in there.

Anyway on the bases of these factors i would say the future of how well palm does depends on how they go round the sharks and how they perform in this capatilisation alonside good marketing.

Its a tough one but if palm does well it could diversify the market for many professionals and offer them somthing beyond a toy.

So the real question you would want to ask is how well can palm bounce back from shark knocks and in an undetered help the mid range (builders, scientists, Government reseachers, and if their lucky doctors(mind you if palm can invergorate the bulder trade it would get some top business that isn't there yet).
It's all down to market transformation which takes devotion and loads of people msunderstanding things, not triangles but at the same time as making true progress, making money is important to which palm will not be alone nor will evnvitably do the best(i can't see any dong that from track records) but they might do quite well and grow out.
Is communications just entertainment thats what you've gotta ask and is palm ready for that or will they be able to capitalise the current bread and butter(pen pushes who want their childeren to do better and doctors/consultent things wasting money).

So put simply how usful will this be and if they get ahead of the game will sharks and idiots knock them out looking at impraticle things because they looked nice yesterday.
If it were a full on adult market i would say yes we could all develope using such things but as i said earlier its cmmoing from toddler stage and som groups with big influences don't even want it to be as open/developing as it's is so far.
Adverage I'Q or other mesurements of intelligence 101 (climbing and under attack) whats your guess?
Is it all trully down to how good things are or do other hands play.
Whats this this ratio look like compeared to 5 years ago
despritism:optimism:actual development:sustainability:stupidity

Bleach is still used when making medications is it not.
Plus you should eat a bit of everything(wow talk about a cop out)
walmart sells not one thing that does not have sacrifice (not one).
Macdonalds uses more radish or somthing.
Whats news.corp all about talk about opinionation with no real content.

Year so anyway toddler to child.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

Do you pray to god (maybe you should start)

Ok so your asking builders and they've got different storyies about mistakes made that palm could solve.
So many you may be able to see somthing that could have potential.
Unfortunitly the people you want to talk to a are the quite ones who were perfecting the arcs and curves owee and angles.
Their the root to an edge.
There friends who designed the building want them to have the perfect tools for triangualating all possibilities with the possibility of being able to do things they could not before.
Amongst that there is the potential for the big one.
what you want is endorsment from big FM so that he dreams his workers are even more perfect.
So that the world he rules/owns (year he owns everything accept some stuff i've got and some buddist technologies inc all microsofts efforts so far) can support follow FMs wanting perfect more perfect.
This guy is the sort of person who recons he'll gobble microsoft into oblivion one day and they'll never work out it was him (and he probably will).
Thats the kind of man you want to impress and show how such a gadget can be used and developed for his perfection of a world. Making sure you consider his interests first. This could give you access to the coolest stuff that would allow you to develop the perfect tools to better the craft to make his buildings more perfect.
It's not a bad life and beat board rooms pissing you off so much.
Thats what i reckon anyway portable computing is ideal for developing as a new tool for the building trade as somthing for somone perfect.

Ofcourse i'm not mr perfect i hate perfect it kind of kills all those imperfect things that don't tend to make themselves above art.
Not to mention the guys don't tend to solve science properply calling stuff caos when i can prove theres no such thing.
Anyway primitive as he may be you palm is his because it is primitive of his and to benefit his perfection with some of his perfection is good for you.
If you ask me i hate good(to many missing bits and crap languages) but you go ahead.
Sorry i'm probably speaking nonsense there no such thing as perfect is there.

[gregmclarke]

Maybe the New Guy Will Listen

To install the Palm Pilot, it requires that the specific user must have admin rights. Very few large organizations give admin rights to anyone, ever. I'm tech support for a large school system with 35,000 PC's. We have hundreds of Palm Pilots gathering dust because business teachers can't install the software to teach with or use. There is not a version where students can sign on and practice using a PDA. Palm PDA's will go the way of Lotus 123 that was so protected that nobody would buy it. Maybe the new guy will listen since the current people at Palm won't. Yes, there is a technical solution to the problem, but it is out of reach of most users with zero clout with network administrators.

[acjohnson55]

"Huge potential for Palm to innovate around its software"

There's been a huge potential form Palm to innovate for years, something which they've completely ignored. Palm hasn't done anything exciting in hardware OR software since the Tungsten was first released, like 5 years ago (note that the Treo was Handspring's product). They are confident that they can forever keep shipping incremental improvements on existing devices without giving the consumer anything new. They have essentially the same sad set of PIM applications that debuted with the first PalmPilot, and from a user standpoint, precious little has changed with their OS since then, besides the continual degredation of its vaunted stability. It's been amazing how Palm has managed to burn so much good will in such a short time.

As for the Foleo, it has potential, but once again, Palm has hamstrung itself by skimping on the hardware. I applaud them for FINALLY including WiFi in a product, but this thing needs multimedia features built-in. Right now, the Foleo could be their wildcard, but they absolutely need to make it a more exciting product. For example, it absolutely needs at least an add-on that will allow it to play DVDs. They are counting on developer community to bail them out, like it did in the days of OS 3, but those days are gone. Nowadays, people expect a product to be great out-of-box. The Foleo, as it's currently spec'ed, has NONE of the flair that iPhone has used to generate so much buzz. Right now, it's just yet another confirmation that Palm has completely lost touch with the market.

Although extremely disgruntled, a small (and completely irrational) part of me is still charmed by the product I fell in love with years ago, the Palm IIIxe, and wants Palm to pull this comeback off. But I'm not holding my breath...