Palm Pre Wins CNET Best of CES Awards

Clones are never the same as the original... and I think you're underestimating what Palm have done here. They've been working on all this for a long time - at least the last two years. I wouldn't expect any of their competitors to have instant clones for some time yet.

Multitouch was around loooooooooooooong before the iPhone, mate. And the iPhone cloned the Treo in a number of ways, from the call management to the mute switch to the threaded SMS. Apple weren't particularly original themselves. They gave us nice hardware and a pretty operating system. Both of which were just completely leap-frogged by Palm. Sucks to be them!

There are some things on the Pre that aren't cloneable with a simple OS update. For one thing, you've got the removable battery, which Apple has repeatedly refused to incorporate into the iPhone. The development platform is also something that Apple can't do by a simple update. By using Web standard development technologies, Palm has created a phone which anyone can program for, whether they pay Palm for a spot on their upcoming application store or not. Apple could've done that, but they chose not to. And copy and paste functionality seems to be beyond the capability of iPhone's OS. I'm not sure why, but it's obvious to me that if the iPhone was capable of copy and paste, they would've introduced it already. Ditto for multitasking.

It looks to me like an arms race. Clearly, Apple took some cues from Palm in creating the iPhone, while upping the multimedia ante. Now, Palm has turned the tables, taking cues from the iPhone UI (e.g., with multi-touch), but have upped the ante themselves with better hardware and a more robust OS.

I'm actually not sold on the Pre yet. I think you lose some functionality by not having it stylus-capable. There should at least be the capability to do jotting and simple drawings, even if you expect all text input to be done through the keyboard. And I think you limit the UI unaccpetably, as well. You just can't manipulate small objects the same way with your finger as you could with a stylus. It's bad enough that Palm ditched good styli in favor of the toothpick that the Centro uses. To abandon styli altogether makes no sense to me.

I'm also wondering how well a JS/CCS/HTML OS will handle I/O tasks. I was happy to see that DataViz is one of the partners on the Pre, but does that mean that you'll be able to edit documents with Docs to Go? Will you be able to create documents, as well? (Yes, the Pre isn't really suited to type long documents with that small keyboard, but I don't see anything stopping you from using a Bluetooth keyboard with it.

In general, the Pre looks like a huge leap forward for Palm. I just wonder how much of their strong software legacy they'll end up leaving behind, and how long it will take to make up that ground...

> ...In general, the Pre looks like a huge leap forward for Palm...

The UI, pretty much all that was demoed, is indeed a huge step forward for Palm. It's an incremental step forward for phones, however and the competition out there isn't just laying around saying "Oh, we're beat!".

iPhone Nano anyone, with hard keyboard?

Both of which were just completely leap-frogged by Palm. Sucks to be them!

What the hell are you talking about? Did Palm suddenly sell 10 million of these while I wasn't looking?

Palm has an uphill battle. You STILL need to stop being such a fanboy. Palm did a good job with the software, but to claim it's some breakthrough that all competitors will copy? Bullshit. How many iPhone clones have we seen in the past two years? Eight? Twelve? This is just one more device that people will ask, "Oh, is that an iPhone??"

-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G

Perception has to translate into *buyers*. Given the speed at which the economy is sinking, even "free" might be too expensive for most people soon.

>>>once done you have access to cut-and-paste and other features.

I didn't know that. Is there a jailbreak prog/util that enables universal C/C/P?

Is suddenyly thinking a low-end iPod Touch might be good training wheels. With jailbreak.

> ...Yes. It's called arrogance. Or maybe Steve knows best.

Nah, that's just an Apple-hater's idea.

I was talking about REAL reasons.

[I since read - here? - that there are some sort of security issues with same or some such]

I hate the Apple thing. It's a "cultural problem". More specifically, the turtlenecked, Steve Jobs, thumb-up-the-ass, liberal-with-too-much-money "cultural problem".

Nah, that's just an Apple-hater's idea.

And since you're a "Palm-hater", you would know.

Your view of Palm is as seriously unrealistic as the gushing fanboys, something like an "anti-fanboy". But I guess if hanging out at a Palm website and attempting to spread poorly devised FUD is your thing....

freakout is on with this one. The Pre ups the ante, beating the iPhone in quite a number of areas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it hasn't shipped yet. But "not having shipped yet" didn't stop all the iPhone fans from talking about how awesome that product was.

BTW, what Palm device are you using at the moment?


"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

Throughout it's corporate life, Palm has rarely lifted a finger unless forced to by competition. Anything innovative after the first couple years has been "borrowed" from their licensees or competitors, or purchased outright: color screen, removable flash, rechargeable battery, hi-res screen, Treo, etc.

This phone is Palm's "hail mary" and I truly hope that it signals a change from their patterns of the past 10 years or so. If they FINALLY prioritize quality control, innovation, and customer service - they may have a chance.

I think more than anyone or anything, we can thank Rubinstein and all the former APPLE people who are now at ApPalm, Inc.

This isn't a race about who can cram more features into a phone.

The thing that makes the iPhone successful isn't its features, it's iTunes and the iTunes store, Mobile Me, plus desktop integration. It took Apple a decade to build up towards this. Palm is starting out from nearly zero.

You might be right about what makes the iPhone successful, but that's got zero to do with what makes for a successful phone. There's a big difference between those two things. There are people who won't buy an iPhone specifically because it fails as a phone. compare RIM's smartphone sales to Apple's. Apple is definitely a player in the space - and certainly a larger player than Palm, at this point - but the iPhone is not the phone to beat in anything other than the coolness factor - which certainly includes the UI.

And where did you get the idea that Palm is "starting from nearly zero"? Palm's been involved in desktop integration, synchronization, and the whole mobile space before the iPod was even a gleam in Steve Job's eye. Palm has lots of experience with what works and what doesn't in the mobile space. The problem Palm has had is resting on its laurels with the Treo devices and OS5. The Pre is the device they should've launched when they announced the Foleo. Of course, a lot of the services that the Pre will hook into either didn't exist or weren't as powerful when the Foleo was announced.

Given that Apple isn't budging on those, it's a safe bet that it isn't affecting their sales.

Have you looked at the sales figures lately? Apple has ~ 5% market share, whereas RIM has ~ 54%. Now, what was that you were saying about not affecting sales?

Web development with JavaScript and HTML is hard; many programmers can't even do it. And you can't build many of the apps that have made iPhone successful: games, music and video software, imaging.

Web development w/ Javascript and HTML isn't that hard. There are many thousands of people who use these every day who've never compiled a program from C source code in their lives. Of course, it somewhat depends on what level of Javascript expertise is required for the Pre environment. But the number of people who can code in HTML and Javascript far outnumber those who code Objective C. And to add to that, the iPhone environment limits you to coding on a Mac. (Well, at least, officially. I've read where you can install VMWare on a PC and run the SDK, but I haven't been able to confirm that.) And to that, add the fact that Apple treats their development platform as a walled garden, with them being the sole distributor of apps (outside of corporate environments, at least). It all adds up to developers having a much easier time with the Pre than the iPhone. HTML and Javascript come with their own limitations, of course, but the difficulty programming them isn't part of that.

Now, the kind of software you can develop with the Pre environment may be limited, but it might not be as limited as you imagine. Palm is giving developers access to the Pre hardware in ways that Apple isn't with the iPhone (e.g., with the calendar and video/music functions). And the inclusion of DataViz as one of the partners likely means that Docs to Go will be part of the equation, which should give Pre users the ability to create documents (presumably at least Excel and Word) on the phone. To my knowledge, the iPhone's document viewing ability, such as it is, is limited to the browser or e-mail, and creating documents isn't even a consideration.

The real competitors to Pre (worldwide) are Nokia and Android, and both of them are much further along in terms of music, online experience, developer base, and openness. Oh, and they both are actually shipping products.

This part I agree with, although I wouldn't necessarily say that Nokia is competing for the same customers. On the high end, Nokia is mostly known for their Internet tablets, I think, and the Pre isn't going anywhere near that space, from what I can see.

Actually, I was wrong about the 54% being RIM. It was actually Nokia:

http://tinyurl.com/8e8jg7

Another, more recent article from December tells a similar tale, though:

http://tinyurl.com/9jj9a6

Apple is still far behind Nokia, and lagging behind RIM.

And it's because iPhones are not seen as work devices.

It's a big mistake to think that Apple is the company to beat, merely because they have the flashiest phone. It's probably even a mistake to call an iPhone a smartphone, given all the things that iPhones can't handle (document editing and copy and paste, to name two things).

My main point is that pointing to iPhone sales as proof that they're necessarily what customers want, in terms of features in a smartphone, is a mistake. And attributing iPhone's success as a smartphone to its media handling ability is even more of a stretch.

bosco - what do you use for desktop pim?

watch new sales growth, not market share. who's growing the fastest?

And why would you watch that? Growth doesn't tell you who the dominant player is. All growth tells you is who the Flavor of the Month (or quarter) is. If I sell 10,000 smartphones one quarter, and then 100,000 the next quarter, my growth has increased tenfold, but I'm still getting my ass kicked if the biggest player in the space is selling a steady 500,000 per quarter. By the "growth" standard, Linux is besting Windows in the marketplace. But that's not how such things are really measured.

you sound like palm in the 90's, silly.

It's not that growth is irrelevant, but superior growth doesn't mean you're winning. Do Nokia and RIM need to watch Apple carefully? Of course. If Apple starts to sell a lot more units than Nokia does, or if Nokia experiences negative growth, that's a problem. But growth itself doesn't tell the tale. Apple has a good distance to go before they really start to challenge Nokia. And the reason for that is that Apple hasn't listened to negative feedback on the iPhone at all. They seem content to be a pop sensation. rather than the dominant player in their space. There are a lot of improvements Apple could make to the iPhone, if they wanted to, to make it a better phone. But that's not the direction they want to go in, so they don't.

It's no different than what they're doing with OSX. Imagine where they'd be today if they allowed PCs to run OSX. They'd sell lots of copies of OSX, and they'd have more "switchers" who, having used OSX, would realize that they would get a better experience on Apple hardware. It's Apple's control mania that prevents that from happening.

I think it's fair to say developments at Apple have been a bit hindered by health concerns, OK?

The decisions Apple has made regarding OSX far predated Jobs' health concerns, by all indications.

And please, Nokia isn't even a factor anymore. Most of their sales are from bottom-feeding phones like the one I have

The phone I had before the Centro was exactly that kind of "bottom-feeder". But that's not a smartphone, by any measure, so how does that have anything to do with Nokia's smartphone sales?

The fact of the matter is, Apple is a force in the smartphone world, and they get lots of press for the innovative UI, but the sales don't approach that of the big players.

Company 3Q08 Market Share (%)

Nokia 42.4
Research In Motion 15.9
Apple 12.9

Part of that is pricing, and part of that is also the fact that traditional smartphones do things that the iPhone can't do. (Whether it can't do them because Steve Jobs doesn't want the iPhone to do them is irrrelevant.)