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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."
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.
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.
So I have a WebOS phone. I find the multi-tasking interface and frankly the menu for quick changes to the radio highly enjoyable. I took it for granted until I tried to navigate around on an Android phone. WebOS (and Blackberry is imitating it on Playbook) has a great way to interact with concurrently running apps and switching between them in full screen mode. The radio menu I didn't think was special, then I found myself working on an Android phone and having to jump out of the menu to go to system settings to do something with bluetooth that was much more immediately accessible on my Pre. Also, surprisingly, my phone had LEAP wireless support out of the gate and my peers were having to try to hand hack wpa_supplicant.conf to get the function out of their Android handsets, that didn't work out of the box. WebOS 2 has Cisco Anyconnect support baked in, but Android is not there yet either. The messaging app does a good job of putting everything (SMS, AIM, jabber, whatever) in one coherent interface.
From an API perspective, they completely screwed up by *not* having the 'PDK' from the get go. They foolishly thought Javascript+HTML5 was 'good enough', with no camera api, no microphone api, no 3D api. Their hardware features crappy, fixed-focus cameras. They rectified mostly the software side, with a nice OpenGL+SDK that makes it trivial to port linux apps (and evidentally iOS), but desperately need decent hardware. One thing they did *almost* just right was the integration of inductiive charging into the experience. They should never have had a non-capable back part, they should have had third-party access (added in WebOS 2), and they should have officially blessed a car-oriented usage of the technology.
So the big thing is they nailed the UI. On the surface, however, the 'big names' that created that have been poached. It's hard to say what will happen now. Microsoft and Google do have the disadvantage that they can't dictate every nth detail to the handset makers, which gives Blackberry, HP, and, of course, Apple, an interesting advantage for the most seamless experience. Apple's vision is clear and I'm not a fan of it myself, so I like an alternative. Palm came closest, but I don't know how Honeycomb, WebOS 2, and the next wave of Blackberry devices will pan out.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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!
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).