With CES behind us, one of the biggest surprises was the announcement of the Palm Pre, Palm's latest entry in the smartphone market. Designed in part by Jon Rubenstein, a former Apple executive, the Palm Pre is a multi-touch screen phone with a pull out QWERTY keyboard that some pundits think has the best chance of challenging Apple's iPhone - but is there any truth to that statement?
First of all, Palm has to be given a lot of credit for delivering, by all accounts, a sexy looking phone that had a lot of people crowning it the best new product from CES. ThePre sports a 3.1 inch screen, comes with 8GB of storage, has a 3.0 Megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-FI, an accelerometer, an extremely polished user interface, cut and paste (gasp!), EvDo , and even the ability to run applications in the background. Not too shabby at all. In fact, spec wise, this might give the iPhone a run for its money.
But in today's smartphone market, hardware is fast taking a backseat to software in the minds of consumers, and Palm might soon find itself fighting an uphill battle in that regard. The PalmPre runs webOS, a new platform that by all accounts is extremely intuitive and well-thought out. The new OS is based in CSS, HTML, and Javascript, so there definitely won't be a shortage of developers capable of coding for it. The only question is if developers will want to.
As I alluded to earlier, consumer expectations for phones have grown over the years. In the past, a phone that played music and video was cutting edge, whereas now that capability is expected. That said, and as Steve Jobs has mentioned as well, the differentiating factor between phones in the future will be software, and in that regard, the iPhone is already out to an extremely commanding lead. Developers have seen the financial success possible via the iTunes App Store, and with over 10 million iPhones already in use, it might be hard to convince developers to code for the Pre. It also doesn't help that Palm stated that its App Store will only be accessible over the air. People can hate oniTunes all they want, but there's no denying that searching for and downloading media via your computer is a lot easier than doing it on your phone. Of course, having the capability to purchase media from your phone is extremely convenient, but if that's the only possible avenue, the user experience will lagappreciably behind that of Apple's.
Other factors to consider when discussing the potential success of the Pre is that it will be tied exclusively to Sprint, which currently trails AT&T and Verizon in total number of subscribers. Another factor is price - When Peter Kafka of AllthingsD asked Palm CEO Ed Colligan if they would undercut the price of the iPhone, he responded, "“Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product?”
Gutsy. I like that. But a $250 Palm Pre, let's say, might not be that appealing to a customer also looking at a $199 iPhone with access to the already more than 10,000 applications currently in theiTunes Store. Also, while the Pre's slide out QWERTY keyboard is nice, BlackBerry already has that segment of the market on lockdown.
The Pre is expected to launch in the first half of 2009, and will have to compete with the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm, and the G1 in an already competitive smartphone market (sorry Instinct, but you don't make the cut). To its credit, though, it seems that in developing the Pre, Palm wasn't angling for an iPhone killer. So rather than mimicking what Apple has already done, they went off into some new territory, and came back with some intriguing new features like Palm Cards that will definitely make it an attractive phone for potential buyers. All in all, the Pre looks great and extremely promising, but the iPhone is a freight train plowing through at 300 MPH, and it's extremely unlikely that the iPhone has anything to worry about. RIM and Google's Android on the other hand...
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is or isn't
" and it's extremely likely that the iPhone has anything to worry about. "
you mean unlikely, right?
Strategic shortcomings of Pre in the post-iPhone era
"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
Being late is not always bad
Obviously we'll have to wait and see but being late to the party does mean you get to see what everyone is doing and how they are doing it.
Market Share, new ideas?
i think this is palms "last stand" - if the pre takes of they might have a chance, if not. bye bye palm.
more than 3 smartphones
"All in all, the Pre looks great and extremely promising, but the iPhone is a freight train plowing through at 300 MPH, and it's extremely unlikely that the iPhone has anything to worry about. RIM and Google's Android on the other hand... "
there are more than 3 models of Smartphone... and Apple's biggest mistake to date is limiting thier customer base by being so prtotective / selective about network operator choice.
I'm a Vodafone customer... can I have an iPhone? no.
It's about time people in the press released the real life restrictions mean more than the hype they push
Pre Market share
There is a big market out there for smartphones and Palm has a large history of appl developers behind it. I'm sure some of those and new ones will write for it.
Does it do all this better than the iPhone???
I would love to buy 1 of these... does it have:
Built-in wi-fi that runs faster than the iPhone's?
Which phone opens Word, Excel and PDF file attachments?
Weigh less than 5 ounces?
Which of them are thinner than iPhone at 0.5"?
Which can I install more than 11,000 different apps into? (Many are free!)
Which can I write my own code for?
Which phone can use over 17,000 AT&T wi-fi hot-spots, for free?
Which phone has more than 8-16 BILLION bytes of ram? (Without buying extra mem cards)
Which have a better/faster browser than Safari?
Which have 100 accessories that I can buy at stores all over the world?
Which phones cost less than the iPhone's $199?
Which have multi-touch screens bigger than 3.5"?
Which phone sells more than 1 million units... just in the 1st weekend?
Which phone has more than 3 GPS methods? (Cell, satellite, wi-fi.)
Which phone gives you high-speed, UNLIMITED data for under $30/month?
Which phone has more than 25,000 developers writing apps for it?
Which phone can I buy in more than 62 countries?
Which screens are sharper than 163 pixels/inch?
Which phone quickly sold 13,000,000 phones?
Which screens can display more than 16 million colors?
Which has a built-in battery that last 5-10 hours of continuous talk-time?
Which phones let me leave 5,000 songs on my home computer, but still play them on my phone from anywhere in the world?
Which phone let's me listen to more than 1,000 free radio stations, even though it has no radio in it?
Which phone can play 50,000,000 movies/videos/TV shows, without storing any of them in the phone itself?
Which phone can make free voice-calls over wi-fi, all over the world?
Re: Does it do all this better than the iPhone?
Which phone works on Verizon, the largest network operator in the U.S.?
(and no AT&T is not the largest; as of last friday when Verizon's purchase of Alltel was finalized.)
Another cool phone I won't buy
For some reason, these phone manufacturers continue to make exclusive deals with phone companies that I do not subscribe to and will not. Meanwhile, Verizon continues to sell boring phones. If Verizon were not the only reliable carrier where I live, I would switch, but they are, and I won't sacrifice service for a 'cool' phone.
Whatever it may be
Whatever it may be, it is difficult to have a competition with Apple, the giant.
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