How Palm's Treo Got Boost From BlackBerry Lawsuit

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Palm ramped up its marketing campaign for its Treo smartphone while rival Research in Motion was embroiled in a patent fight, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The result: at least 1,500 new inquiries about the Treo in the past few months from corporate customers, resulting in 600 free trials, Palm says. In total, Palm says it has more than doubled its number of sales leads since October. "The doors have been opening," says Ed Colligan, Palm's chief executive. At a November staff meeting, Mr. Colligan says he told his staff to "step things up. We have to go back and knock on doors and respond as fast as we can." ... Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.'"

Comments

that sucks

[BewireNomali]

because i've used both, and the blackberry far eclipses the treo as a mobile email device.

the blackberry is popular because it does mobile email REALLY well. It also excels in one hand operation because of the clickable scroll wheel. It's also intuitive and easy to use - as well as significantly lighter than its bulk would indicate.

the blackberry isn't an browsing device - it's for voice and text - and it's ideally suited for the workplace.

I haven't used the windows mobile treos, but the palm treos are heavy with small keyboards. The units don't multitask well - and they CRASH. I've never hada blackberry crash - treos freeze up all the time.

maybe the windows mobile treos are better - but treos need to go a long way, from form factor onwards, to truly best the blackberry atwhat it does.

Re:that sucks

[HaydnH]

"I haven't used the windows mobile treos, but the palm treos are heavy with small keyboards. The units don't multitask well - and they CRASH. I've never hada blackberry crash - treos freeze up all the time."

FUD!! Treo's crash due to 3rd party applications (at least with up to date firmware and default applications). If you get a crash on a Treo you can dial #*377 (code is dependent on Treo type) and it will tell you what application crashed it - remove the 3rd party app that's crashing your system and your fine again! The main reason why the palm Treo's are so good is that there are loads of 3rd party apps, however a lot have been written by hobbyists or for previous versions of Palm OS - why do people keep blaming Palm for other peoples errors?

If I put a cron job on my Linux box doing an init 0 every 5 minutes does this mean Linux is unstable??

Re:Push email on the Treo?

[DJPenguin]

www.chatteremail.com - push email works really well with my home machine running Dovocot IMAP server.

TREO 650

[Reflex4468]

I've got a 650. It was my first Palm device, and I can now not live without it. I am a Professional Sound Tech, and now could not live without having internet and email coming to a device in my pocket. There is not an email push(yet), but it is coming. I automatically download my email every hour, which is fine for me. I currently use my treo for a movie player, mp3 player, cell phone, email reciever, computer remote control, and personal organizer. Go buy one.

Lots of inquiries, not so many buyers.

[Jack Johnson]

I imagine most of the attention came from people like me. Even though my employer would have been "exempt" from a shutdown, I was tasked with investigating alternatives to BB handhelds and BES last fall when the threat against RIM appeared to be real.

The worrying is over now and we're sticking with BB/BES.

Re:Treo 600 a nightmare/Treo 650 perfect for my ne

[Lumpy]

I had 3 600's and 1 650 and all 4 of them had the buzzing in the earpiece and audio to the caller when the bettery would get down to 50% or less. also random lockups that take a reset to get it back are 100% unexcuseable on a phone. I can not have my phone lock up and not recieve calls because the hardware was not proven to be robust enough.

Palm's in general have been great. but they always failed horribly when they tried to marry them to a cellphone. I had the origional Qualcomm Palm unit and it sucked horribly in life and stability. Then I have tried off and on the treo's and all of them had a major flaw that makes them useless. The flip treos would break their hinges within days of getting it, the 600 and 650 have lockup issues and a shielding design flaw that palm refusesto fix (It's even in the 700's! I know of 2 people that have the 700w and they get the buzzing when the battery is lower than 1/3rd.

until they decide to quit making them cheap and put time into making a robust pda/phone that will last more than 12 months they are not practical.