Monday's iPhone 3G S announcement was a bit of an anticlimax, and certainly contained no surprises. I mean, a compass app getting top billing? Even the $99 entry-level model was expected. Lots of little incremental enhancements here, though, making a fine product even better, sure, but not enough to do much more than accomplish the most important task at hand: deflect attention from what may be the biggest competitor to date, this being the competitor that just started shipping a couple of days ago. Mission accomplished, Apple, although with a lot of help from said competitor.
What's really interesting in the 3G S announcement is the fact that Palm made so many errors in their own introduction of the Pre. Pre-announcing (so to speak), letting a full description of the cat out of the bag far in advance of actually being able to ship the cat, as I've said before, is never a good idea. All this does is to tip off the competition, and Apple, conveniently enough through the World Wide Developers Conference venue that Palm should have know about when they set the Pre's ship date, stole a lot of thunder from Palm without even trying very hard. Now, to be sure, the Pre is no iPhone killer, and, again, there is no such thing regardless. But Palm could have played this much better, especially since they are operating from a position of serious disadvantage WRT marketing, applications, presence, aura, applications, and vibe. Oh, and applications. Sure, no one really knows what all of those 50,000 iPhone apps really do, and I'll bet almost all of them are fairly useless - except that bulk is clearly good for much more than one's digestive tract.
I think, though, that the real purpose behind Palm's pre-announcement strategy was short-term financial gain. Checked their stock price lately? It's up by a factor of six this year. Apple, on the other hand is up only a mere 40% or so. So it's possible, if you ignore everything except that which really matters, that I'm very wrong here.
But I still don't think I am. The Pre will be Sprint's (and those guys are, after all, in serious need of a boost, even though their stock has more than doubled this year) iPhone, and perhaps Verizon's as well, assuming the latter can't snag the iPhone, which I still think they will. AT&T didn't win any points at the Apple announcement, what with no tethering, no MMS, etc. The Pre will do well, but it won't match the iPhone in unit sales, applications, aura, or in any other meaningful dimension. Regardless, there will be many additional iPhone killers announced over the next couple of years - but, like the Pre, none of them will actually get the job done.
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
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It is my personally
It is my personally experience that at&t customer service is the worst in the industry I have changed many phones and situations to back this up. I would like to go with palm.
both are really good products
Both the Pre and the iPhone are good products. They both physically look good. They appeal to people's senses. They're easy to use.
Yes, the Pre is at a disadvantage right now. It currently has a small user base and few apps. At the same time, Apple started out the same way when then jumped into the smartphone market. Apple made it even worse by telling developers that the only "apps" were ones they build on web servers. But guess what? They did pretty darn well!
So far the Pre is showing itself to be a very open and extendable platform. I don't think we will have to wait long to see some very useful (and plenty of useless) apps.
The sync functions on the Pre are amazing and I think could be the killer feature once people understand the concept. Palm has to figure out a good way to communicate what Synergy does.
All the complaints about limits on the iPhone with developers are not there with the Pre. Furthermore, I just was able to get my "hello world" app up and running on the Pre. It doesn't do much, but it was very, very easy. No need to purchase a dev kit or learn Objective-C. One of the things that helped the Palm Pilots back in the early days was a very open and well documented platform. Any developer with a little knowledge of C could build an apps for the Pilot. The Pre continues this tradition and ups by making it even easier to program.
I do have some complaints. Can't anyone make a cool smartphone that knows how to deal with .ics attachments? That goes for both Apple and Palm!
Don't agree
When the iPhone launched, even all the analysts then were not sure it could really sell so much. So its easy to get someone to say the Pre that is a new product from Palm will beat it. Just watch and see, Palm will give Apple a run for their money, because the most successful Apple product the iPod was designed/created by the current Palm CEO. So this report is not credible. I'll bet on people more than products any day. if Rubinstein can deliver, which I'm sure he can, Apple will have its full. Not to mention, the pricing pressure that is already hurting them now.
iPhone is USELESS because it cannot open .ics attachment
iPhone is USELESS because it cannot open .ics attachment and add the meeting notice as a calendar appointment. It is TOTALLY useless as a business device. Its is pretty much JUST a TOY with out this MUST have TOTALY CRITICAL business need. MILLIONS and MILLIONS of complains on the web about the 1 MISSING Functionality that is the NUMBER 1 need of ANY mobile device.
I won't mention that as a phone its kinda LAME or that its bluetooth is MUCh weaker that MOST inexpensive phones but not being able to open an outlook meeting invite and add to you calendar is just pethetic. The iPhone can NOT move from a fancy TOY to a useful business device without being abloe to open a .ics meeting invite and add to calendar program. It is a MUST have or it is just an expensive music toy.
Ics support
Agree. iPhone is a nice toy until they have non exchange ics support.
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