Smartphone Wars: What The Heck Happened To Palm?

Palm has tried to innovate beyond the five-year-old Treo with little effect. It announced with great fanfare last year that it would build the Foleo, a cross between a smartphone and notebook computer, only to cancel the project three months later. While cellphone makers like Samsung, LG and R.I.M. brought out products to compete with the iPhone, Palm has told Treo loyalists and investors to be patient. They will need to be. Palm's stock price is down 90 percent since its high in March 2000.

Mr. Rubinstein, the executive chairman, said he is convinced he can bring Palm back. "Everyone is trying to make an iPhone killer," he said. "We are trying to make a killer Palm product."

Roger McNamee, a partner in the venture capital firm Elevation Partners, brought Mr. Rubinstein into the company in June 2007 as part of Elevation's deal to invest $325 million in Palm. (Elevation now owns a 25 percent stake.) Mr. McNamee gave him a mission: shore up product design and software. Mr. Rubinstein scrapped existing product plans. He has been recruiting top executives from Apple and Microsoft. And he is focused on redesigning Palm's out-of-fashion operating system.

On Wednesday, he and Ed Colligan, Palm's chief executive, will announce the debut of a new smartphone primarily for business customers -- the Treo Pro.

(NYT graphic worth seeing: Palm's market share is still larger than that of Apple, but the trend is obvious.)

Read the full story here

Related:

::What iPhone Has Done Wrong In The Smartphone Wars
::How BlackBerry Users Can Pretend They Have An iPhone
::Joanna Stern: No Thanks To An iPhone

Comments

[jsgaetano]

03:07 PM on 08/22/2008

Palm was great. Ten years ago. Sadly, they haven't progressed much beyond that point, and come off as really long in the tooth.

I work with this stuff. Compared to a solid and reliable Blackberry, the Palm is just crap. It often resets itself for seemingly no reason, sometimes even in the middle of a phone call. It also has plenty of issues with the backend data sync if you use it for corporate email, whereas everyone wants to be like RIM (even the iPhone drools with envy at Blackberry's corporate email abilities).

Palm could have ruled the world of mobile devices, but they were too busy making all the wrong business moves- spinning themselves off from US Robotics, then spinning off the operating system, then making crazy assumptions about how many people would purchase PDAs, then failing to do anything at all despite consumer demand for a PDA-Phone. Finally, they had to purchase Handspring just becase it was embarassing to have their competitor make a way better Palm than they did (as well as Handspring being able to get the phone part working- the Treo is was a Handspring product).

Palm had their chance. They should just go away.

[zull2]

02:15 PM on 08/22/2008

I've got a Centro. Love it. It helps to be a hacker, but if you know where to get applications for the Palm, or know how to write them yourself, you can do some pretty interesting things with them. I personally find iPhone far too restrictive in what I can and can't do. Sure, it looks pretty, but my Centro is smaller than an iPhone...if not just a bit thicker...and I can get things done fast when I only have one hand to spare. It's a whole lot easier to use as a phone and text messaging device, too. Yeah, the interface and apps don't look quite as pretty, but they're functional and efficient and I get things done fast with them. Maybe they don't have this multi-touch stuff...but I push one button, and I'm where I need to be.

This is coming from a guy who has written software for smartphones for the last 10 years ...I've written applications for iPhone and Windows Mobile phones, and the phone I carry these days when I really want to get something done is a Centro running good ol' Palm OS. People who try to impress each other with how glittery their phones are, are pretty much idiots. I'm impressed by a wedding ring with a big diamond, or a nice necklace, NOT a cell phone. It feels too much like being impressed by someone's toaster.

[mediamarv]

12:51 AM on 08/21/2008

When is this page going to be updated?

[Counterglow]

12:02 AM on 08/21/2008

I've got a Palm Tungsten E2. That's a long way from state-of-the-art. It's got Bluetooth and accesses the internet either through my cell phone or a WiFi card.

But what makes this thing a thousand times better than the competition, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's got a fold-out keyboard that allows you to actually type. That's coupled with a cut-down version of Office, movie and MP3 capability and a decent-sized screen to display the graphics that pay my bills. Basically, it's like a very small, somewhat-retarded laptop. I wouldn't trade it for any of the iPhone-type toys flooding the market. Thumb-typing is for teenyboppers. When I want to type exactly what's said during 15 minutes of a meeting into a fully-formatted Word document and instantly send it off, this little thing blows the doors off the phone-like alternatives. And it will output MP3's to anything with jacks on it for up to 11 hours straight. For $200, there's nothing close.

[hilaritee]

11:55 PM on 08/20/2008

the palm centro smartphone works very well. it is not geared for business use but still runs on the palm os, which is very reliable.

[EdwardEdwards]

10:46 PM on 08/20/2008

Blackberry beat it senseless, and now iPhone is beating Blackberry hard.

[BruntLIVE]

12:06 AM on 08/21/2008

Blackberry is NOT getting beat. IPhone is hardly winning or ties with blackberry, they are not even close. It SEEMS that way, like the fake hourly changing polls on politico.com

[countryjoe8]

08:16 AM on 08/22/2008

It's about marketshare. The IPhone hasn't beaten the blackberry, however, it has been gaining marketshare. The first quarter of this year IPhone sales dropped off but that was attributed to the fact the new 3G phone was coming out this summer.

Remember, the IPhone has only been on the market for 1 year and 1 month.

[We]

09:35 PM on 08/20/2008

91 year old Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine is a Palm Pilot Black Belt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_PeLNzxNQ

[Hypomaniac]

08:26 PM on 08/20/2008

I bought a Palm for a Central American sojourn and it was useless; difficult to type and the internet connection never worked. A glorified address book... I could have stayed there another month for what I paid for it.

They better get their act together pronto or they are done for.

[rh654]

06:48 PM on 08/20/2008

Like it or not Microsoft is the standard - companies that want to go on their own are usually doomed for eventual failure. Microsoft may not be the "best" but it is typically "good enough" and people already know how to use it. Most people only need a "good enough" solution and once they learn how to use something won't change unless they have to.

[yesyesyes]

08:02 PM on 08/20/2008

Mediocrity does rule, people will bash others for trying to be different.

[KarateKid]

11:00 PM on 08/20/2008

And I'll bet with your penchant for the mediocre you will vote for McCain, too.

[KOisGod]

06:43 PM on 08/20/2008

When RIM come out with the BB, and it talked to Outlook, I know palm was soon history.

Micro$oft - resistance is futile

[TheJibreelaMonsters]

06:02 PM on 08/20/2008

I want my palm back... I have a THC and it crashes more than a MBTA "T" train

[KillTheMessenger]

05:57 PM on 08/20/2008

The current devices in the "smartphone" market all remind me of a device called the "Osborne 1" (that includes the iPhone). They are all about as useful... and like with the Osborne I don't happen to own one. I am delaying the purchase until somebody releases at least the equivalent of an IBM Thinkpad.

:-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Osborne1.jpg

[mediamarv]

01:48 PM on 08/20/2008

Go to Techcrunch.com for news of today's new release.

You're welcome.

[HallStyle]

01:04 PM on 08/20/2008

I have a palm treo 700wx. The problem is that so many people have palms that don't have Windows Mobile. Palm OS system sucks! I am Glad that My Palm comes with windows mobile. I love Palm and I think that the iphones are just gimmicks.

[AtTheMoon]

12:40 PM on 08/20/2008

i hate my treo and can't wait until my frikkin contract is up