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What Happened To Palm?
Ian Lamont writes "Palm's fourth quarter results came out a few days ago, and they were not pretty: Palm reported losses of 40 cents per share, for a quarterly loss of $43.4 million. It's the fourth straight quarter of losses, and it's clear that the company is not faring well in the rapidly evolving smartphone market. The Treo line is lagging after seven years, and while the Centro has done well, it's not well enough to compete with the likes of the iPhone 3G and RIM's surging BlackBerry line. New competition is on the horizon, with developers and manufacturers working on the Google Android platform and the recent news that Symbian is being open-sourced. What happened to Palm? What can the company do to effectively compete in the mobile market, and turn its fortunes around?"
Palm OS was brilliant at running PDA-style apps. However, that's not the direction portable computing was going, and Palm never did much to address the future. When every other platform was moving into media, Palm was proud of its third-party support calendars with more buttons.
And don't get me started about the Graffiti 2 debacle ("Easy to learn, even if you'll never get faster!"). Instead of working out a deal to keep using Jot and its trickier-but-faster strokes, they switched to that two-stroke abomination that instantly cut power users' data entry speed in half. Way to save a penny, Palm!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've owned Palm gear since .. oh around the time the original palm3x came out. Bought it from CompUSA - loved that device for about a year.
Got a good lead on a VX - and scored one. Very awesome; although the lack of being able to use aaa batteries was somewhat dissapointing, it seemed to hold a good charge. Even up until a year ago when I got rid of the unit.
Did everything with this machine. GPS, kept my contacts, even had about 15 minutes every morning where I would manually sync my business calendar with the one in the Palm to stay on top of things. Truly this machine was the best PDA I've ever had.
Fast forward to .. oh 3 years ago? When the T|X came out, told my wife that I wanted one for Christmas. And I got it! Played with that thing for about a month, using it to watch videos at the gym and playing music at work. For data entry and screen visibility, this device was awesome.
My gripes?
1. The audio out on the device is noisy with low impedance headphones. This drives my tinnitus up the wall. Constant "hisssssssssss" regardless of the volume level. This is either a product of cramming an audio amp next to the screen or just a crappy amp.
2. Screen squeal. No lie, this thing emits a vile, harsh sound from the screen anytime that it is on. It's not that noticable, but again - I have slight tinnitus in my left ear, and it makes my left ear go absolutely nuts. I believe it is in the same sound spectrum as a TV flyback - because they both do this to me. Anyways, 2 RMAs later, and they state that this problem is expected with this kind of display technology and they're not going to fix it. This seems to affect every one of their devices - go into your local staples/office max/whatever and find their Palm section (if they still have one.) If you turn them on, you're guaranteed to hear the squeal - my wife was giving me shit for not using my gift she got me, and I then walked her by the Palm section. She didn't berate me any more after that.
3. Had to RMA for failing power button. This happened about 2 months into the device, and really drove me nuts. This exact same issue happened with my Palm Vx late in life. They did fix this properly, and to this day the power button works.
I no longer use the device and it sits on my shelf due to the screen squeal. I also bought an MP3 player that plays videos (granted, on a much smaller screen) so I no longer need this one at the gym. It also doesn't accept SDHC cards (DOH!!!)
Now, my thoughts as to why they're doing bad in the market:
1. They don't fix clearly obvious issues with the device (#1 and #2 above)
2. My work laptop now has wireless access every place that I go in my company. This gives my laptop the ability to be my "pda" even though it isn't as convenient.
3. With #2 being true for a lot of people, there's just no market for a small portable repository of address books and calendars for the masses. Note - there are probably some niche areas where a PDA comes in handy, but in my line of work (Network/Voice Design) I just don't have a need.
4. Same as above, I still see a PDA and a phone combo as a niche device. Blackberry and Apple are getting this area right - by integrating with popular mail types (Exchange, Lotus Notes) that companies use to keep their employees abreast of things. I'm not sure how Palm still does this, but back in the day it was some convoluted connector that runs on your local PC. Not too handy if the laptop is sitting in the off position in your laptop bag.
Karnal
This was a letter from Engadget to Palm back in 2007, it left an impression on me after I read it. I think most of it still applies today.
Dear Palm,
Man, what a crazy year, right? We know things haven't really been going your way lately, but we want you to know that we haven't given up on you, even though it might seem like the only smartphone anyone wants to talk about these days is the iPhone. It can be hard to remember right now, but you used to be a company we looked to for innovation. You guys got handhelds right when everyone else, including Apple, was struggling to figure it out. And it was the little things that made those early Palm Pilots great -- you could tell that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to think about what made for a great mobile experience, like how many (or rather, few) steps it took to perform common tasks.
The problem is that lately we haven't seen anything too impressive out of you guys. Sure, over the past few years the Treo has emerged as a cornerstone of the smartphone market, but you've let the platform stagnate while nearly everyone (especially Microsoft and HTC, Symbian and Nokia, RIM, and Apple) has steadily improved their offerings. So we've thrown together a few ideas for how Palm can get back in the game and (hopefully) come out with a phone that people can care about. (And we're not talking about the Centro / Gandolf.) Read on.
So yeah, it was probably a smart move to recognize that you needed to offer a Windows Mobile version of the Treo to appeal to enterprise users, but there are literally millions and millions of consumers who want a high-end, powerful mobile computer that isn't built around Exchange server support. What they're looking for is a great user experience. Apple has done a good job tapping into that market, but there's still a huge opportunity out there for Palm to offer a smartphone that's just as engaging as the iPhone, but that's also open, rather than closed, and more geared towards productivity.
Frankly, you've taken a turn from being the respected underdog and innovator to repeat offender in stale gear. Every press release you issue or "leaked" photo we see these days is another dent in your already banged up armor, and really, we're not sure how much more we can take -- our loyalty has practically become an embarrassment among peers. The New York Times totally nailed it when they said "Palm is about to release a new model in its Treo line and photos leak out to silence." That said, we humbly submit a few (mainly practical) suggestions for how you can turn things around, organized by hardware, software, and other.
Hardware
Get thin - Three words: FIGURE IT OUT. If HTC, Apple, and Motorola can offer thin (and we mean friggin' thin) smartphones, you can too. We know you think the Treo is perfectly proportioned, but it's not. It's chubby. No excuses any more, ok? It doesn't have to be as thin as the iPhone, but you've gotta trim some of the fat.
Bigger, higher resolution displays - Make the screen bigger and up the resolution and you'll go a long way towards winning us back. There's no reason the 750 shouldn't have 320 x 320 (or higher) -- Windows Mobile 6 supports that, or didn't you hear? But for new devices you might want to have the keyboard slide out, like with the HTC Hermes or the Samsung i730. It's a really smart move. The long and short of it is this: if you can find some way to marry the expanse of something like the iPhone's or G900's massive, high res screens and still retain the spirit of the Palm keyboard, people will be very interested.
Speaking of the keyboard, don't mess too much with it - Apple may or not add a physical keyboard to the iPhone (our money says it won't happen), but the one the Treo has now is pretty good and it's pretty much the one thing that's keeping a lot of Treo owners from jumping ship. And from what we hear, the Centro is going to have a keyboard that's "impossible to type on" -- not