Palm Responds to the iPhone

Several people noted a NYT piece about Palm's response to the iPhone. Essentially, their response appears to be to hire a former Apple engineer and a couple other folks -- while also pursuing plans to perhaps sell the company. Nothing like a dual approach to the problem.

Comments

why competition is good

[UnknowingFool]

Whether you like or dislike Apple or their products, Apple is a catalyst for change. Personally I applaud Apple's entry as it may encourage all phone makers to reevaluate their UI. The UI on my phone sucks but they all equally suck.

Ex-Apple?

[dr.badass]

Palm seems to be very proud of the fact that they hired an ex-Apple engineer, which seems rather silly considering that Apple has thousands of them. It gets better when you consider that ex-Apple in this case means that he last worked for the company about ten years ago. No story here, unless the subtext is that Palm OS is going to start looking like System 7

One Hand Clapping

[Doc Ruby]

Palm is dead. Over 2 years ago Palm sold its OS to the Japanese "Access" corp that makes so many Japanese phones and their most popular web browser. So Access could finish their long heralded "Cobalt" OS, and switch to a new OS which was Linux, under Cobalt (retained as just GUI and compatibility layer). They were supposed to release Linux (+ Cobalt GUI) phones last Fall, before anyone had heard about the (real) iPhone.

But they didn't. Just as Palm let the Blackberry come from behind and eat the market Palm created, Access has let PalmOS keep it from even reaching the market before Apple is eating it, without even a released product.

It's all too bad. The PalmOS approach, focused simplicity on tasks, designed as a tough peripheral, with the most natural interface, writing on the screen, was the right paradigm. Handled properly, it should have forced all computing, whether workstation, mobile, phone or mediaplayer, to "just work", adopting many of its friendliest innovations. Now that job, as usual, is up to Apple.

How wise is industry wisdom?

[hey!]

From TFA:

The company's own Palm OS software is widely seen within the industry as aging and in need of a fundamental revision.

I went into a big box computer store recently, to buy a cable for a PDA I'm developing for. I was shocked; a few months earlier thre had been about twenty feet of counter space devoted to PDAs. Now there was zero -- just two shelves under the counter, maybe two feet wide, half for Palm, half for HP iPaqs. In its place was now twice the retailspace, devoted to iPod accessories.

While the industry had been busy competing to offer "updated" PDAs, Apple has kicked the entire lot into retail obscurity. They can't even, as entire industry, hold their own against fashion cases for the iPod Nano. Apple is a company that has carved out a niche by not only ignoring, but flagrantly defying industry "wisdom", which comes from a group of people far too focused on what each other is doing.

The problem, I think, is this: when the innovations are pursued on the basis of their low marginal costs, they tend to end up having marginal value too. Palm hit the innovation ball out of the park with their first generation PDAs. They scored a series of base hits with their upgrades through the Tungsten series. Palm has the customers and retail channel (for now); the sentiments quoted above say that they should use them to innovate within the bounds of the PDA or smart phone paradigm. But we have reached the point where the value of the next "PDA innovation" is not enough to get you on base -- not in a game where a base hit consists of a $200 retail purchase by a consumer.

The true destiny of the PDA is not to accrete laptop like capabilities. It is to become a cheap commodity. The world needs a Palm m505 for $19.99; not a Life Drive (just discontinued last month) for $399. That is the true meaning of convergence: PDAs have become marginal appendages to phones; their job is to sell phones.

The idea that PalmOS should become more like PocketPC and accrete new features only makes the situation worse. As the sales of PDAs plummet, both Palm and PocketPC will suffer, but PocketPC is destined to drop even faster.

The problem for a company like Palm is not that money cannot be made with a product whose fundametal retail value is destined to plummet. The problem is that money cannot be made with a conventional tech company culture, which is biased towards on stuffing as much features and functionality into a product as will fit. The best thing would be for Apple to buy a nearly moribund Palm for a song.