How Palm Screwed Up
from the executiion-efficiency dept
Palm Computing is certainly in trouble these days. This article explains why a lot of it is their own fault. It includes this great, understated quote from an analyst: “They haven’t exactly proven themselves to be the most execution-efficient company.” They still have a market share lead, but the fact is they’ve been incredibly slow to innovate. Many folks (myself included) used to really like the Palm devices, but now see how much more a Pocket PC has to offer. Depending on what you need it for, the Palm still fills the low end of the market, but it’s still essentially the same device as the Palm Pilot I bought five years ago.
Comments on “How Palm Screwed Up”
I Agree
This is absolutely true. The “killer app” for Palm in my eye has been the form factor of the Palm V and 500 series. But now PocketPCs are getting darn close to that form factor.
I own a Compaq IPaq and a m505. I still think that Palms are simply a better organiser, and that is the one I carry, leaving the IPaq home for my wife to play games on. The organizer functions are 90% of what I use it for anyhow. But the power of the PocketPCs constantly has me tempted. Palm has got to get serious about using a real CPU, putting some multimedia punch to these things, and giving it a serious memory upgrade. Unfortunately for them, they need this product yesterday.
Power existed in 1997 - the Newton
Ever wanted to record something? How about play a video clip? Telnet into a system via ethernet/modem while typing with a keyboard? Web Browse?
Guess what? The newton did all of that. In 1997.
The palm had to things going for it.
1) Price
2) size
They knew what was a win, and have not deviated from that win. Eventually PocketPC will get to size, and Palm is working on raising its price by moving up to a ARM processor.