No matter what happens in the smartphone industry, Palm has always been there with headline grabbing activity (good and bad) which keeps the brand in the spotlight. Without doubt the leader in early PDA usage and again the leader in early smartphones usage, but one which never failed to kicked itself where it hurt time and time again.
The early PDAs, and especially the operating system, were practical and well designed which quickly grew a large user base that could look no further than Palm OS. The V series showed an understanding of style and this was the very first PDA to attempt to make the genre fashionable. Despite the presence of Sony, Palm continued to gradually improve its product, but eventually followed Sony in certain areas and we ended up with PDAs that could perform multiple tasks albeit with some issues. The same applied to the early smartphones, all of which had substantial problems, and all of which were soon overtaken by competitors. If I look back at my own experience with Palm OS products the overall impression is one of almost perfect, but not quite the full ticket-
Palm V / Vx- a PDA which was beautiful to look at and great to use. The same applied to the m500 series.
Palm T series- the T3 was ridiculously good at the time and despite some battery issues was about as complete a device as you could hope for at the time.
Palm T5- a utter disaster in my experience. Highly unreliable despite the presence of a decent hardware setup.
Treo 650- a great, great phone with a huge battery and superb data input. The lack of dbCache memory was a big problem for many power users.
Treo 680- should have been great as well, but the battery life was a killer for anyone who actually needed to make phone calls.
All of the Windows Mobile phones from Palm followed similar lines and never quite stood out from the crowd.
Palm Pre- a superb OS married to average (at best) hardware. Battery issues persist and the overall build quality is less than stellar. The inability to offer all of the third party apps to people outside the US irks some of us and rightly so.
The fact remains that Palm is sitting on what is potentially the best smartphone OS in the market and that the word ‘potential’ is what dominates here. Palm has not realised the potential and has concentrated far too much on the OS. Good software needs good hardware and vice versa- forget one and you may as well forget both. I still believe that Palm could do very well indeed, but it is sad to say that it is more likely that it will be swallowed up by a competitor who sticks some better hardware behind the OS. Is that such a bad thing considering Palms record on hardware delivery? I think not.
And then Carel came up with some more reasons for the current problems- “I’m not a marketing or logistics expert, but why didn’t Palm enter new markets when earnings started to fall in the handful of countries the Pre is currently available and instead offers the Pre with HUGE discounts? Why do they offer an improved Pre in the states but still announce the old one in France (rumors say the Pre is about to be released in France soon) and the rest of the world?
Why isn’t there any kind of ETA for other countries? Although i thought it was 8 months….the Dutch Palm site is telling the Pre is “available soon” for over THIRTEEN months. There are some people on their marketing department who should look for another job. When I buy an unlocked Pre only a handful of applications (150+) are available….most of them not very useful.
I was a Palm fan for over 10 years but it’s hard for me to understand what they are doing. I even bought myself an “unlocked” German Pre a few months ago but it was a horrible experience. Palm did accept my Euro’s when I bought my device but refused any help (No 3rd party apps and No data connection and very hard to setup in a not supported country) because I live in a “not supported” country. Luckily the shop I bought my Pre had a return policy.
So it’s not a surprise for me Palm is having a hard time.”
