In Greek tragedy, the flaw of hubris was the decisive plot point that brought down many great men. Palm, then, is the Oedipus of a modern tragedy, their efforts to rebuild hampered by a failure to see past their own greatness and a refusal to enter the market on the market’s terms.
To be honest, I was a Palm fan, then I wasn’t a Palm fan, and now am part of the chorus of voices bemoaning the lowly state to which the company has been thrust. Palm recently reported $349 million in revenue with a third quarter loss of $102.8 million. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said:
“If we could have launched at Verizon prior to the Droid, I think we would have gotten the attention the Droid got. And since I believe we have a better product, I think we could have even done better.”
That’s right: when the going gets rough, blame outside forces. Palm had a huge build-up at CES when the Palm Pre was first announced and now they’re taking a page from Apple’s playbook and boosting the Pre and Pixi Plus devices with some memory and processing power. Sadly, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, especially when the gander is losing profits. Palm shipped 960,000 units last quarter and, as Giz points out, sold 400,000 of them. Someone is buying Palm handsets, but 400,000 isn’t a big number.
Palm needs to sell itself. Their IP is strong and their brand is strong and well-known. Someone like HTC could take Palm and run with it, bringing Palm’s social-media connected OS to a whole new set of consumers. But things need to change and quickly.
This post seems quite unfinished. “But things need”
This article is a bit of a cliffhanger :)
I love my Centro and I’ll get a Pre Plus when my renewal comes up if they stay in business that long. The longer iPhone stays off Verizon the more hope there is for Palm.
I still have my hopes with the palm-kind, I mean even if they have a plummeting career this year in both financial and technical aspects, one thing that keeps me on following them is their Palm WebOs
If they can update, then I think it can have that needed competitive advantage against its other mobile contenders.
palm down today 20%
RIM buy palm.
Get me a superphone which looks amazing… ton of features… apps… EMAIL! …and great hardware. OH and advertise the shit out of it on all carriers. Thnx. ttul.
Noone really likes BB OS they tolerate it bc – 100% email reliability – is free from work – has a GREAT keyboard. But once they are paying for smartphone data and see everyone else with their apps, web pinching, etc they get a little “why do I need to borrow someone else’s phone to check something on the web”
Buy PALM.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/os6_0.png
not kidding…buy palm or i’m going to Android…forget it…i’ll probably go to Android anyway…
Why would HTC spend money on Palm? I think they have enough on their plates developing handsets for 2 very large companies without the added headache of trying to revive a platform that could easily die in the next 2 years.
I think the person that needs to buy Palm is a handset company that either 1 doesn’t have it’s own OS yet or has an older breed but huge install base (Nokia/RIM) that could use what Palm has done to their advantage.
HTC should buy Palm just for their IP so they can turn around and sue Apple.
Realistically though Google is the one that should be buying Palm, there are a hell of a lot of good ideas in WebOS that would help push Android even further beyond where Apple is stuck at present.
Very difficult to take an Apple strategy without Apple’s market leverage. No Apple Stores. No Web-centric sales approach (unlike Apple). Limited carrier support. Late to the game SDK.
But the Pre is enterprise friendly (my focus and interest) and probably already there, regardless of speculation on long-term future. Execs were using Palm devices from the US Robotics days and many have a soft spot for Palm.
Big question is: can they be profitable and grow in their niche? If not, how can they help another company grow their footprint, relevance or both.
RIM’s the likely buyer. They are watching dev mindshare flocking to iPhone and Android and they need to do something to stop the bleeding. Course this is like grabbing an anchor when drowning, but hey.
So yeah – Palm, you officially suck. No, not because you had to buy Handspring after the people who were part of the company left, made a product and you realized how much better it was.
It’s not because you had one of the first internet connect devices which could access a calendar AND music (Palm i705).
It’s not because you’ve found a way to alienate millions of people all over the world but not doing anything with R&D instead separating the platform (Access) from the devices (Palm Inc).
It’s because you are a dirty liar. You promise that “you’ll do better” like a lover caught cheating and looking to get back into our good graces. The Pre took forever to come out and STILL has a ton of bugs. Promises for better battery life STILL haven’t come to fruition and despite the progress made in 2010 you let carriers dictate when you can get your phones onto other carriers.
I swear, once a Windows 7 phone comes out – I’m done.
They’re a bit clueless, aren’t they? Pretty sad where they’ve ended up by their own doing.
And better product than the Droid? I didn’t know they doubled as comedians.
I have been a loyal Palm customer for years. I had the Palm M125, Tungston T3, the Verizon Palm Treo 700p and the Centro. I loved them all. I decided to get a Motorola Droid instead of the Palm Pre Plus because the Pre does not have a memory card slot. Why did Palm take away that feature, which has been in use for practically all of their previous models? Palm made a bad decision that had nothing to do with the Droid or timing.
Poor old Palm. Sob sob. They are the architect of their own downfall. But as a Palm user I don’t want to see the company go down into the sewers. They have solid, dependable tech and they need to rethink their business strategy and perhaps more importantly rebrand themselves. Most hip twentysomethings wouldn’t be seen dead with a Palm as it’s seen as the phone for boring old business users. They need to make themselves attractive to the iphone generation and that ain’t gonna be easy.
Palm alienated their existing users by throwing away hotsync (simple, reliable, secure, 3rd party support) to focus on synergy, presumably to chase after facebook and similar cloud users. Yet
> Most hip twentysomethings wouldn’t be seen dead with a Palm as it’s seen as the phone for boring old business users.
Way to go, Palm. [And no, I don't count Classic as preserving hotsync, since it is only for legacy non-multitasked apps.]
Actually, they don’t really need to appeal to that market if they don’t want to. Surprisingly enough, people don’t stop buying phones the day they turn 30, and there are far more unhip people in the world than hipsters. Palm’s problem isn’t that they aren’t going after the “iphone generation.” Palm’s biggest problem is they burned through any good will they had with their, at one point, quite huge user and developer base, by sitting on their ass and not getting anything done, while repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with awful management decisions.
Had the Pre come out as an unlocked phone available in different flavors for all networks, five years ago, like it should have, Palm would be an almost unstoppable force in the smartphone industry. Unfortunately they just decided to milk the Treo line, and Palm OS, until it was long past dead, and then only tried something new as a ‘hail mary’ when the company was already about to die.
Palm is probably one of the greatest examples ever seen of a company who is their own worst enemy. I hope someday someone writes a book about the mind-boggling number of idiotic decisions that have been made by Palm over the years, all of which just served to hand the smartphone market over to anyone able to not be a complete moron.
HP should buy Palm.
I might have been willing to try the Pre, had they come out with an unlocked GSM/3G version.
I don’t really get Palm’s thinking. We’re going to rebuild our company with future-focused products, to rebuild our brand and get back market share… by making CDMA phones only available on Sprint. Yeah, not exactly what people were looking for there Palm.
Can someone confirm that Bono and the boys in U2 are big investors in PALM, having injected capital to the point where the own a significant portion of the company?
Elevation Partners has invested $460M to date in Palm,
http://www.elevation.com/EP_port_item.asp?id=6
and Bono is a managing director and co-founder of Elevation.
http://www.elevation.com/EP_IT.asp?id=112
Dunno about the rest of the band.
Yes, did some digging and found that. Also found out that Bono bought a lot of this at about $4 and has a whole slew of options priced under current market. No doubt he made out just fine.
They had Up and Down main things they lost there true innovator Jeff hawkins. But they have new Ceo been there less than 3 years he has a good background. Palm did good with pre. Find another way to explode.
Palm has a good product on their hand (WebOS). The hardware is love/hate. I know people who love the Pre but when I go with people to buy phones and they see the Pre they always say “the keyboard is to small”. They wont give it a chance even though they admit they like the OS. So what does Palm do, they bring out the Pre Plus with some minor cosmetic changes (and more ram…etc). They put some spaces in between the keys, which when I show friends who have Verizon they still say the same thing “the keyboard looks to small”.
We are very visual people and when we see something we may not like its hard for us to get past it. Palm doesn’t seem to see this so they can adapt. Look at RIM, they came out with the Storm, people didn’t like the clickable screen so they changed it, it still isn’t a hit but now it looks like they’re making a phone that has a physical keyboard and touchscreen. They did all this within a short period of time. In that same time Palm hasn’t figured out their flaw to fix it.
The reason I haven’t and probably won’t get a Pre for my next phone is because I don’t know whats going to happen with Palm and WebOS. For the people who have the Pre now if Palm goes bankrupt and no one buys them then they’re screwed with a phone that won’t get updated. If someone like Google or RIM buys them then they probably won’t upgrade the present OS, they’ll just incorporate WebOS with their present OS. Now if Palm gets through this or if someone like HTC, Qualcomm, Hitachi/Casio/NEC, or Sanyo/Panasonic buys them they’ll probably continue updating the present OS and just build new products. I don’t want to buy a phone and then not get any more updates so I’ll wait. Maybe I’ll buy an Android phone or a Blackberry, or a Windows phone 7 phone and the then the following phone maybe I’ll go back to WebOS or whatever the intertwined OS’ that might be used.
If Palm wants to stay around I think they just have to do what Microsoft is doing with Window Phone 7. They need to let other developers make the phone while they concentrate on WebOS. They can give lowest required specs and let the hardware manufacturers raise them if they want. If they do this they have a chance. If they keep going on the road they’re going I’m afraid they may not.
They could try and make a product with a bigger screen and a big landscape keyboard, and a memory card slot and do everything themselves, but thats a huge gamble that I’m not sure Palm can afford.
I hope Palm makes the right choice.