The iPhone Impact on Palm
Piper Jaffray wireless hardware analyst T. Michael Walkley has released a new research report on Palm and the potential impact of the coming of the iPhone. Walkley says Palm will be the hardest hit by the iPhone and reports on claims that the continued introduction of new Blackberry devices will further hurt sales.
"With the BlackBerry Curve ramping and iPhone launching June 29th at AT&T, we view Treo as the most impacted by these launches and anticipate even further declines in sell through trends." He says clerks at AT&T stores had already reported “frustration” in trying to sell Palm’s "750" series of Treo phones. Moreover, the upcoming introduction of a new model of BlackBerry, the 8830, at Sprint stores, will hurt sales of Palm’s recently introduced Treo 755p model.
via Barron's Online.
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RE: Impulse Buy?
So to make general, sweeping remarks about "this device being the most impacted" really is not something I think people should do. People will buy what they feel is the best device, no matter who makes it; Palm, Apple, HP, etc...
IMHO.
All good things...
RE: Impulse Buy?
The trap Palm has gone into is that they are aiming only at the so called business segment. This is something the large ones like Nokia, SE, Samsung, Motorola - well - everybody else except RIM has deliberately chosen not to do. They only include a handfull of phones in that segment compared to several dozens in other segments.
I think the business segment with regard to gadgets is something that only exist in the US. There may be many reasons for this, but I think the main reason is the Americans urge to be uniform, and particularly within the business segment. In Europe a phone is something you change every 6 months so you look good. Anyway, it is a small niche, in global spec it is miniscule, but most importantly it is a niche that is *not* the technology leader, it is not even technology driven, and certainly not something to associate yourself with if you are going to be hip, cool, or even stylish and classy. It is impossible to walk around with a Bleckberry or Treo and at the same time be classy and stylish, or even geeky (then you go for HTC or a Linux phone if you can get one, or simply an N95).
Having looked at the iPhone more closely I find it both classy and stylish, maybe to the point of being boring, boring in the "Desperate-Housewives"-kind of way, if you know what I mean. It is definitely not geeky or hip or cool, although the technology is cool. It is THE perfect toy for grown up girls (women, housewifes in particular), and will therefore sell alot, in the US at least. I don't think it will sell much elsewhere, the specs are just too low at the moment (2 MP camera, no 3G etc). When it finally comes to Europe it will be old news as well as being even more outdated technologically. Besides, watching movies on a small gadget is just too geeky (or plain childish) to be classy, yet the device itself is too classy to be geeky, so for all practical purposes it will be a walkman phone and has to compete with SE who comes with a new and classi*er* walkman phone several times a year (SE need some competition here, but the iPhone is not it, not even close at the moment). I have to admit that the iPhone seems to redefine ease of use in a phone, which is THE weak spot on all Nokia phones, and in this respect it pushes the technology several notches compared with any other phone. So, the iPhone clearly is the leader in ease of use as well as being both classy and stylish. In some ways it is a technology leader, and it has to be because it is heading for a technology driven market segment, the main segment, the largest segment. Point is: if Apple chooses to go for the American business segment sometime in the near future, they will totally wipe out both RIM and Palm. Chances are that the iPhone even with today's specs will be good *enough* for the American business segment (and if the boss has one, the rest will follow ...)
The Foleo, which I think is an extremely good idea and concept in general, is also aimed at that miniscule market segment. I just can't for the best of me understand why Palm has chosen that path - again. By increasing the specs just enough to use YouTube, the market suddenly widends several thousand times.
Regarding impulse buy I think it is more like this: In every price segment people tend to expect the same specs, and this is in most respect true. Sure there are some differences, but they are tiny, it is more a matter of this phone having 3.2 MP camera while that phone have 2 MP camera, but included 1 GB SD card and so on. What is left is design, looks, feel, size, sound.
RE: Impulse Buy? better count your apps and your taps
Furthermore, did you see how tedious it is to delete an email message on the iPhone in Apple's iPhone Guided Tour: http://www.apple.com/iphone/usingiphone/guidedtour.html
It is at least a two step process for EACH EMAIL message you want to delete: slide your finger to the right over the message and then tap the "Delete" button that appears.
On the Palm, it is a one step process for each email where you place a check mark next to it in the list view and then you select Delete from the menu at the very end. Furthermore on the Palm, if you know that you get more junk email than real email, you can tap "Select All" from the Message menu (which places a check mark next to each email message) and then only uncheck those email messages you want to keep.
So if you received 100 new email messages on your Palm and 90% of them are spam, then all you have to do is tap less than 20 times to keep the email you are interested in:
Tap 1: menu
Tap 2: Select All
Taps 3 to 12: Uncheck the 10 emails you want to keep
Tap 13: menu
Tap 14: Delete
Tap 15: Both
Tap 16: menu
Tap 17: Empty Trash
Tap 18: OK
From what is shown about the iPhone in its Guided Tour so far, you would have to slide and tap your finger over 180 times!!! That is 10 TIMES MORE WORK (180/18).
I also wonder how easy the iPhone will be to scroll a web page or email message list EXACTLY one screenful at a time. The Palm has the dedicated 5-way navigation hardware button for this while on the iPhone you have to slide your finger, which may cause you to scroll further or not as far as you wanted to. It does not look as exact as dedicated Page Up and Page Down hardware buttons.
The iPhone does have a much nicer web browser, music and video player, and photo viewer than the Palm. And Apple is marketing the iPhone way better than Palm has ever marketed any of their devices!!!
RE: Impulse Buy?
... you need better spam filtering.
Micael
Treo 750
RE: Treo 750
If he's a good salesperson, his goal is to move product, especially products that aren't selling quickly.
Peace Out
Alan
RE: Treo 750
Uhhh, I'll take a stab here and guess that you have never had to support yourself / family on a paycheck from sales. The only people with that kind of motivation are the bean counters. The sales guys are usually motivated to move anything and everything that puts commish in their pocket, including the furniture if necessary.
I would be more inclined to say "his goal is to blow smoke near certain orifices so that the customer feels great about their purchase, thus cherishing their product, thus having a + experience, thus returning at the end of contract, thus generating more commish." Or who knows, maybe he was just being honest. :-o
Pat Horne
RE: Treo 750
No, that does not show how one-sided anyone's mind is. He/his, etc..., is gramatically correct, as that was gender-neutral. That is how English USED to be before everyone became 'politically correct', and is always trying not to offend anyone. In short, stay on topic, and get a life.
All good things...
Unless, of course and as noted elsewhere here ,...
Positive Impact on Palm
The Blackberry's are the business user's e-mail device of choice. Problem is that while you can open office document attachments, you can't edit them and e-mail them out.
The Palm does it all with excellent third party software. E-mail, check. Open attached office documents, check. Edit office documents and e-mail them out, check. Get information on the web, check. MP-3 and video player, check. Tons of games, check.
The i-phone has forced Verizon to allow wi-fi capability for its phones. Palm will add wi-fi and will continue to appeal to the power user that really wants a handheld computer.
I also find it interesting that the widely acclaimed i-phone OS appears from the photos to be just a better looking version of Palm OS. Proving that the windows based approach is not very mobile computing friendly.
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
Casio B.O.S.S. -> Casio PocketViewer -> Palm IIIe -> Palm IIIc -> Tungsten T -> Tungsten T|3 -> Tungsten T|5 -> Palm T|X -> Treo 680
Are you from the Ozarks?
Thanks for making me almost throw up my lunch.
I nominate your post for the "Grossest Post of the Year" (GroPOTY) award. You'll probably win.
TVoR
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
Someone mentioned email above. I can't hardly keep more than a few hundred messages on my Treo because the memory is so minimal. Selecting all and deleting, which is as easy as swiping down the check marks on the side, take about a minute of freeze time before completing the task. Welcome to 1998.
No multitasking in the treo. Spend 5 minutes looking for a web page, look at a note, begin looking for web page again. I suppose people enjoy slow torture?
Anyhow, the Treo is a far better phone than the iPhone, for dialing a contact out of a list of 1000 in three seconds, with one hand. Thanks, Handspring! And the treo is great for speacialized information, like medical apps. I don't need that, nor do most people, but some industries do!
Oh yeah, "thousands of applications" that are no longer installed on my Treo due to memory issues or "third party" crashes. It's a selling point.
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
1) Shrunk the battery life to about half a day's use.
2) removed that pesky reset hole that had been bothering all of us.
3) Moved to the lesser-standard of MiniSD, and put it on the side where you have to dig it out with a screwdriver.
4) Made the "ringer-off" switch black and the indicator color a dark red so you can no longer tell by quick sight whether your ringer's on or off.
5) Moved the camera nearly to the middle of the phone so you can take better pictures of your index finger.
6) Firmware fix for faulty 700p bluetooth pairing was released only about 365 days after the phone.
7) Two words: "Windows Mobile"
With all these brilliant "improvements" and levels of customer support, it's obvious that Palm is in it for the long run. They'll eat Apple's lunch - I mean WTF does Apple know about designing and supporting and improving portable devices and OS's anyhow? No, it's Palm with their winning culture of churning existing customers, ignoring blatent problems with their devices, under-spec'ing and overpromising that will win in the long run. I don't know how many times I've cursed my iPod for continuing to work reliably these past few years, exactly as Apple had advertised. The one time it didn't I walked into an Apple Store and they swapped it right there for a working replacement without an argument - I even got a smile. B@$tards!!
Thank heavens Palm has the reputation and experience to trounce Apple in this field. Jobs will have to stay at Disney full time sweeping floors!
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
I don't get this. The Windows Treo 750W is probably the only Palm device that is still selling outside the US together with the Tungsten TX, (except maybe in the UK where one or two 680s are sold). All reviews you can find on 750W clearly show that this is one of the best smartphones ever created.
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
Someone mentioned email above. I can't hardly keep more than a few hundred messages on my Treo because the memory is so minimal. Selecting all and deleting, which is as easy as swiping down the check marks on the side, take about a minute of freeze time before completing the task. Welcome to 1998.
Just out of curiosity, why on earth would you want to keep hundreds of emails on your handheld? I'm not making excuses for Palm - by now, they should have come up with some way to compress your email archive onto your SD card - but it sounds, erm, excessive.
No multitasking in the treo. Spend 5 minutes looking for a web page, look at a note, begin looking for web page again. I suppose people enjoy slow torture?
Eh? The 650 was bad at this, because it didn't cache web pages, but from the 700p onwards it's simple.
1)Open web page.
2)Use hard button/McPhling/680's new quick launch menu (hold home key) to check note.
3)Use hard button/McPhling/680's new quick launch menu (hold home key) to return to cached web page.
I suppose the argument could be made that it's annoying waiting for the web page to be redrawn, but that's a couple of seconds at most.
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680
RE: Positive Impact on Palm
Casio B.O.S.S. -> Casio PocketViewer -> Palm IIIe -> Palm IIIc -> Tungsten T -> Tungsten T|3 -> Tungsten T|5 -> Palm T|X -> Treo 680
Treo and iPhone are aimed at different markets...
Treo competition comes from BlackBerry. I aligned partially to the dark side by now owning a Pearl phone, altough I still use my TX for daily planner and eReader (and the occasional game).
Apple will have to learn that the life-cycles of MP3 players and cellphones are very different. People expect the MP3 to last for some years until the unit fails, but the phone is different, people change it a lot more frequently, at least once every year. You don't wait for the phone to fail, you change it when you renew your plan.
I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
Palm completely missed out on the internet-features of a smartphone. The antiquated OS simply cannot handle it. And while you tout the abundance of third-party apps available for the Palm - just gibe the iPhone some time and people will come up with amazing Web 2.0-based apps to fill this apparent gap.
Palm's answer to the current challenges is the Faileo. Give me a break!
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
Bzzzzt! Sorry, that wasn't the answer we were looking for. But please take home a complimentary PIC board game...
To steal a quote from David Beers' blog (http://pikesoft.com/blog/), Web 2.0 apps will never, ever be able to replace native OS apps. A web application means:
No access to any device features except for dialing the phone (something you've been able to do from some of the first mobile phone browsers ever developed). Not the camera, not the microphone, not the accelerometer, not the proximity detection, not the multitouch events, really not the touchscreen at all except as mediated by HTML events. So basically no direct access to any form of user input. Not much output, either, unless you're posting character data to a server: no Bluetooth radio transmissions, no display or sharing of captured video, images or sounds, no 3D or even 2D graphics APIs. I guess we could play AJAX Sudoku games created with HTML table tags.
So don't expect a flood of amazing iPhone web apps. It's not gonna happen.
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
Surely WiFi is the way to go. I guess I am luck as the city I live has WiFi throughout the CBD and all my favourite coffee shops.
Michael
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
You will love the internet on that SLOWWWW speed of the iphone
It's the same speed Palm inflicts on Treo 680 users; at least iPhone owners are better off because they have the option of using faster wifi where it's available.
Where's wifi for the Palm OS Treos?
Where's 3G for Palm OS Treos?
I don't want a Windows Mobile Treo because quite frankly, there are far more superior Windows Mobile smartphones (e.g. Samsung SGH-i600)
Palm should have spent its R&D on improving the Treos rather than coming out with some crippled Linux laptop.
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
Where are 3G Palm OS Treos for European UMTS networks?
I've not forgotten about EV-DO in North America, at least Palm's done something right!
That reminds me, I wonder just what sort of influence Palm's European smartphone R&D centre in Ireland has had on the current Treo range. I'm sure it's coming up to two years when it was set up.
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
> rather than coming out with some crippled Linux laptop...
Though I've been a PALM-pessimist for quite some time ("TREO will not save PALM" (*)), in general I haven't had too much to say about PALM management's execution with what they have in the environment in which PALM competes.
That is, PALM's decision to "try another sector" makes absolutely total sense to me - when the Big Guys get interested in the sector in which you have one product, it's time to get outta town!
Granted - I was totally shocked (and floored!) by the Fooleo - I expected WAY more than that (I have to admit I bought into the crap that PALM was oozing with software/hardware geniuses - now we know - hey! - they're like any other company out there!). To give PALM the "benefit" of the doubt, though, maybe someone said:
== "We gotta show SOMETHING at D!"
so they did, ready or not.
But, IMHO, they HAD to get away from the TREOs because they simply cannot compete with companies like Nokia that spit out a new phone every 9 days (on average):
== "...And we have the COUNTER-evidence of PALM's failing position
== in literally all-things-PALM!
==
== That is, they MUST come up with something different and better.
==
== TREO will not save PALM.
==
== Maybe something different and better will.
==
== Stay tuned!"
Of course, the horrible Fooleo world-reaction may kill that guy before it walks but I think they HAD to do it.
==========
(*) Finally coming true, IMHO.
RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...
It has no touchscreen, runs the crappy Smartphone Edition of WinMob and uses even crappier (than MiniSD) Micro SD. What's so superior about it?
RE: been a week now...
Status Left DETROIT, MI
Date/Time JUNE 22, 2007 AT 09:28
Depot DETROIT, MI
==========
So Palm's depot is in Detroit.
btw, would nt it be ironic if that after all this time I finally decide to buy a Treo and NOW the TReo dies because of the new BlackBerries and iPhone.
RE: been a week now...
I highly recommend:
*TreoMemo (http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9309/treomemo-review/ - great improvement over the standard Memos app)
*CallBlock, mp3 edition. Review pending once I get my PC back online - a great way to block the bank from calling you! :D )
*CallRec or similar, for recording those extortion attempts and similar.
*and an 8GB sd card.
RE: been a week now...
I'm in the same boat - my 680 arrives in next couple of days and I too cringed at the implications of this article's title. I draw solace in the fact that I dropped (& totally immersed) my T3 in a water filled gutter tonight - I took it as a sign from above that my decision to buy a Treo was timely. (BTW I think the T3 will dry up and live to fight another day - At last I discovered the purpose of those loose screws on the slider!)
might switch in a year or two...
The Palm medical software which I refer to daily has been very useful, but most can be replicated on the web. You could argue that it's a better deal for web developers, as they don't have to learn PalmOS or WinCE, they just have to resize their pages for 320x480 as some sample pages out there already have. ePocrates, the frequently used drug database, is already on the web, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a small-screen option shortly.
iPhone - high demand
And before I finished asking about iPhone, they told me that they've been getting a lot of inquiries about iPhone, A LOT, and for weeks...
Yes, I understand words like HYPE, but when and how these folks told me -- that was REALITY..., not just an opinion on a webpage:)...
As to webpages -- I've seen a lot of Collective Anger towards PALM. That means they are losing support among its own Customers!!! Good luck to them on converting new ones....
As soon as I know I can get my PIM Data etc over to iPhone (Mac), GOOD NIGHT PALM, and happy U2 songs...
Or GOOD MORNING PALM, time to get up to a New Day
RE: iPhone - high demand
You can just sync it back to iCal, AddressBook and where ever the Memo's go and then when you have the iPhone sync to that. I use Missing Sync for my TX which comes with a Memos app.
Michael
Palm Will Destroy Apple
How is that for a laugh?
Vote for John Kerry... best man for the job.
RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple
That is EXACTLY what I did when I looked at the list of Subjects at the bottom of PIC's home page and saw yours.
Have to admit it made me open a tab containing your message, however - very effective!
Lol!
=========
WAITAMINUTE!!! - I just realized my standard way of reading PIC comments is to go to the bottom of the PIC home page (itself one of N open tabs on my browser du jour - firefox or ie) and open each apparently-distinct-thread comment in its own tab.
I can't do that with the Fooleo!
Good grief.
Guess I won't be getting one.
RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple
Even so, I think Apple still has a fighting chance. ;)
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple
Giggle.
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Impulse Buy?
I'm interested in knowing how many smartphone sales are decided on by the clerk at the store.
I would think that most people who are really in the market for a smart phone (really need the functions -email etc, not going for style or flash) will have made a decision based on experience seeing them work in the real world (i.e. the people they work with owning them, or their own experience).
When I bought my 650 I knew everything I needed to know already. Sure I checked it out in a store to make sure that the keyboard was ok for me. But I'd been a Palm user since 1997 and I'd owned a GSM Blackberry (the B/W screen, Blue one from AT&T).
There is no question that the Treo's seem to be falling behind the curve when it comes to other devices. The info I've been seeing is that the iPhone is going to be desired by many people for style and music reasons. However unless we're all really wrong, the iPhone isn't going to replace a BlackBerry or Treo for someone who really needs one of those devices.
So the question is, for all those people who don't really need a business device (serious email etc) which other smart phone is going to loose sales to the iPhone.