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Crunch Time For WebOS, BlackBerry
GMGruman writes "Hewlett-Packard is planning to unveil its Palm WebOS strategy in a few weeks, while RIM is allegedly working up a new version of its popular Curve that uses the new BlackBerry OS 6 and its touch interface. WebOS has largely faded from view since HP bought it nine months ago, and RIM's been largely silent since its summer release of the BlackBerry Torch, its first successful modern BlackBerry, and the fall announcement of its PlayBook tablet. Meanwhile, it's been an Apple iOS and Google Android show at CES 2011, in the popular press, and in customers' hands. (Microsoft and Nokia essentially ceased to matter by Christmas 2010.) Is it too late for WebOS and BlackBerry? They're running out of time, and the public signs of their plans are not so positive. Still, the two 'also-ran' mobile OSes have a couple opportunities to resurrect themselves."
I think it's early days to say Microsoft can get back in the game or not (though I agree Nokia is probably going to end up running Android someday).
Microsoft still has a lot of money to throw at vendors and then there's the aspect of them suing vendors who use Android for patents that Microsoft holds - I believe Balmer has said publically that "Android is not free" for that reason. That is a strategy that may even out Android/WP7 marketshare, plus WP7 is a very polished endeavor.
I'm rooting for WebOS to find a foothold somehow...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, saying that the #1 manufacturer of smartphones "ceased to matter" is pretty epic.
Here's an idea: HP can buy Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft for its nice UI and graft that onto WebOS's core -- after modernizing the core, of course.
First off, bad idea, and second, WebOS already has a modern core.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Let's see.
Big WebOS and Blackberry web stores with 100s of thousands of apps. Nope.
Cult status of the phone itself. Nope.
People across the world waiting up at stores for the next release, or waiting to upgrade their operating systems with glee. Nope.
Vast ecosystem of accessorizers, weird add-ons, and wicked strange looking cases. Nope.
I'll admit that WebOS is kind of kewl, and you can't deny the crack nature of Blackberries, but you can get that crack in droid and iOS. So, I don't think the poster is dreaming.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
As if Maemo and MeeGo have already died? Maemo has a very active open source community and, even though MeeGo will supplant it, will live on for a long time.
Frankly, I think RIM has ceded the market to Android and iOS. The Torch should've been a remarkable device to keep up with the pack, but it wasn't even as technically impressive as the Palm Pre and WebOS (which is getting a bit stale since we've been waiting for the 2.0 update).
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WebOS has a chance, but it's a small one. I've been a big Palm fan since the Palm Pilot II, and was ecstatic when they released the Pre, as it was technically and hardware-wise right up there with the best of 'em (albeit a bit skimpy on the display size). But my high hopes were predicated on the idea that they'd get lots of developers to pump out apps, and they'd follow up the Pre with an even better device. Well, the first half of the Pre ad campaign was a joke -- and not a very good one. Subsequently, Palm saw a lot of initial sales, followed with...silence. The campaign failed to bring the masses, and because the masses stayed away, the developers stayed away. (It also didn't help that they took so long to release the SDK, and still don't have all the relevant APIs out, as far as I'm aware).
HP needs to hit this one out of the park for WebOS to stay alive. I think that's going to mean:
Killing off Classic, IMO, isn't a great sign. They seem to be betting the farm that they'll pull new developers in, but Classic was a way to lure the Palm faithful over (or at least keep the ones you had.) I'm going to be watching the announcement carefully, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when my contract on this phone is up, I'm going to be getting an Android phone.
A whoooole lot of the market is conservative, old, never reads tech news, and has very limited interest in apps. The people who line up at 4:00 AM are good press, but they don't actually count any more than any other consumer.
Blackberry has a market that is wary of switching. If they're smart they should be able to survive and grow.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
The submitter is myopic in my opinion and here's why:
When he writes statements like...
Meanwhile, it's been an Apple iOS and Google Android show at CES 2011, in the popular press, and in customers' hands. (Microsoft and Nokia essentially ceased to matter by Christmas 2010.)
...one wonders whether he's just ignorant or just tired. Let me educate him. The USA is not the world and neither does it represent it. Nokia is still the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and it's this manufacturer that he labels `cease to matter!`
Any tech person knows that it's not wise to underestimate Microsoft. They are still at the party though no one notices. Sincerely, I feel his conclusions are premature.
Nokia ceases to matter? Bullshit, they sell more phones than everyone else there combined. To write them off as a phone manufacturer is a big call.
Nokia may not be doing well in smart phones, but comparatively feature phones make smart phones look like a drop in the bucket.
Yeah, except for the part about BlackBerry being an "also-ran OS," when in fact BlackBerry is still the leading smartphone platform in the U.S.
Breakfast served all day!
RIM has always enjoyed customer loyalty comparable only to Apple's. They don't call them "CrackBerrys" for nothing. But it's precisely because of this that they face a tough challenge: They need to evolve their product fast enough to keep up with the other smartphone platforms, but they can't change it so much that they alienate their hardcore base. RIM may have leaned too far toward conservatism, though, because their current figures show most of their new subscribers are coming from the lower-end handsets in their product range. That suggests the more savvy consumers with more money to spend are wandering off to iPhone and Android, which is bad, because "business types" represented RIM's hardcore demographic.
Breakfast served all day!
Even the hardcore are taking a hard look at what you can do with other phones. Three months after the iPhone came out, it was forbidden in the board room, but everyone was curious anyway. Six months later, it was the counter-culture thing to have there, along with your CrackBerry. Then the Crackberry was pulled out less and less. The carrier-captive stupidity stopped a few more.
When you look at Droid 2 from Moto, or any one of a hundred other models, it does a lot of work, with a fat community of apps and support. iOS made itself the one to beat, or at least look kewl up against. RIM has tried to remarket the BB in this direction, but so far, it hasn't captured the imagination necessary to reignite sales and get growth. Failing something truly amazing and a community re-think/re-do, the business types aren't going to look at RIM first, but they'll still look.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I saw that when i was in China and Indonesia.
What kind of stupid article is that?
Nokia's market share for smartphones may be dropping but that is happening since they started to sell the Nokia 9000 communicator (Yes that thing could send email at a time when most people may just have heard of the net). Nokia is always having a few trial phones (e.g. the Nokia 9000 was one) to figure out if it works well, and then may decide for a radical switch in the second model (e,g, the 9210 switch to symbian), or trash the series. They have done that now with the N800/N900, so i think they will now pack the experiences frome these devices into a new one. The fact that some often sold symbian phones do not qualify as smart phones is no reason to write the platform off prematurely. I also have an Android device and i like it; however some things, e.g. the "everthing need to be linked to your gmail accocunt" idea to work correctly (e.g. sync/backup) is a little exaggerated. I already discovered some annoying things which my Nokia E61 from End of 2006 does, but my Android 2.2 device doesnt (connecting to an ad-hoc wireless network, using the PC via USB to conenct to the net - and yes there are situations when i dont need additional complications, namely when travelling. The E61 i still use connetc to everything to which it can connect).
I believe that meego paired with the philosophy of Nokia not to try to fuck the customer by forcing him into specific solutions but to just give the device all capabilities for connections which can be imagined will serve well. After seeing the many ways in which apple fucks the customers and google believe that they are not evil, i prefer companies selling me hardware (opposed to thinking of the Software they can put on the Hardware to "advertise" their services to me (or, in the case of Apple: force-feed me).
Blackberry OS6 is only a placeholder until they port QNX to their smartphones. Blackberry bought QNX last April and there are rumours that the new storm 3 will run on QNX. Blackberry already has QNX running on the Playbook. Full multitasking with flash support on a dual core processor. It will be an interesting year but RIM is not preparing to fade away.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I think that it is premature to rule out BlackBerry. I work in IT consulting and I saw many executives try an iPhone and end up going back to BlackBerry because they were just so fast/fluent with the devices. They had a button on the one side set to the calendar and another set to the email and knew all the keyboard shortcuts and it was truly amazing to see how quickly they could get things done. Not to mention that with BES (which they are now giving away for free to organisations under 2000 devices - which I imagine is the vast majority) you can do things like invite attendees to appointments in particular meeting rooms, see their availability and the rooms when scheduling the appointment, etc which are not possible with ActiveSync and particularly not with the iPhone. The enterprise features like being able to force policies which can configure pretty much every setting on the device, wirelessly deploy apps and updates, etc are pretty unrivalled as well.
I personally had a Moto Q9H WM6.1 device until I got my iPhone 3G and I was happy with the iPhone until I was given a company issued Torch at my new job. I am impressed - it is a great really solid and well constructed device compared with my iPhone 3G with nearly as good webkit browser, a better screen, better battery life, more RAM, great multitasking, a great 5 megapixel camera with flash, just as good Facebook and LinkedIn apps and with the above described better Exchange interaction via the company BES server it is a great product for me. I like the fact that it has both the touchscreen and a trackpad as moving the cursor around an email or a mouse cursor around a web page are sometimes better than tapping/holding on the touch-screen (though it can do that too). I like the fact it shows up like a USB disk when attached to a PC and I can just drop music and video files onto that drive and it just works for indexing/playing - even things like OGG/Divx which never worked with the iPhone unless you re-encoded them. I am sure future versions when they get their QNX OS and a higher-res screen and faster processor etc will be even better.
I am waited with great anticipation for the next generation of BlackBerry. The current generation will work just fine for me until then and I don't really miss the iPhone. The Torch is doing what it needed to do - keep their existing customers happy with a solid device better than a iPhone 3G/3GS this generation while they pull a rabbit out of the hat next one which should really be a contender...
They'll be back -- assuming they use their phone for doing actual work. If they're only using the extra functionality for playing 'angry birds', you may want to review your policy.
My brief flirtation with an iPhone left me begging for my BB within hours. It was fun, but I didn't need a toy phone.
While I'll agree that RIM's efforts to enter the 'individual' market have been a bit ham-fisted (Pearl, Storm, Style) their 'business' products have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to productivity.
The BB Torch is the exception, as it's remarkable as an "in between" product. It's like a higher-resolution iPhone 3GS that you can do actual work on. It's my current phone.
Having seen some of the new iPhone and Android products, I was disappointed at first that the Torch was technically underpowered and had a lower-resolution display. That feeling didn't last long as the touch pad and physical keyboard made tasks difficult to perform with a touch-screen only interface effortless. While my non-BB using colleagues struggle, I get things done.
Toss in Documents To Go and RIMs unparalleled email and messaging software and it's an easy sell.
That said, I'll likely trade in my Torch for the next phone in the Bold line. The touchscreen doesn't improve usability, the keyboard isn't as good as the Bold's, and the phone doesn't quite 'balance' right when the keyboard is out.
(I gave it a chance, but playtime is over. It's time to get back to work.)
I expect that once the novelty wears off you'll see people more away from the flashy toys and back to serious tools. This is where RIM and Palm really shine.
Don't count them out so quickly.
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