Editorial: Palm Pre's Fat Chance

[scryer_360]

The article has some sound reasoning, but I have to remind Mr. Van Winkle that many of his complaints were also made two years ago: when the iPhone came out. Many people were saying that other than the touch screen, there wasn't anything to the iPhone. It had music: so did other phones. It had GPS: well, most people who wanted a GPS already had an independent GPS. It could surf the web: so could any Blackberry. It had no audience: Smart Phone enthusiasts would continue to use the Blackberry, media enthusiasts would rather have a dedicated MP3 player, "normal" people didn't want a complex phone, and all that was left was the Mac-heads. And remember the 3G debacle? The original iPhone had no 3G support, and everyone screamed at the top of their lungs about that.

And look how that turned out: the "normal" crowd is impressed with the iPhone's touchscreen, the features that it shipped with were plenty, the platform took off as a media device (like a rocket), and Blackberry users continued doing Accountancy and other boorish things with their Blackberry. And the app store: it was non-existent when the iPhone launched, barely anything to mention.

All these are just the same conditions for the Pre launch, with only two differences: the Pre has to compete with the iPhone on the market, and its on Sprint. You are right when you say few people will jump from the iPhone to the Pre, and indeed with Apple well aware of the Pre's features for many months now they may have included some of the Pre's shinier bits with the new model.

The Sprint part is a double edged sword: on one hand, there has yet to be a killer phone on the Sprint network. There are some assorted smart phones but nothing worth mentioning. Sprint users then may be enthused by the new device and switch over from their 4 year old RAZR and ROKR phones. Maybe those customers who were just tired of having nothing from Sprint, no good phones, no killer network access, might be enthused by the promise of the nations first 4G network, and this new shiny Pre.

On the other hand, no one, like you pointed out, with an iPhone will be so terribly ridden with the desire to switch to a Pre, unless they have the old iPhone and they hate AT&T enough (plenty of people on that last boat, but the first? no). And isn't there an application called MobileMe that makes cloud computing an the iPhone possible? Blackberry users, ever convinced they must remain boring and stick to their Accountancy, will continue to use Blackberry.

But I have to say, the Pre DOES have a market. There are people who simply wouldn't have an iPhone, or Apple products, of which many like to post over on Toms Hardware quite often. Then we have people who don't want a Blackberry, either because they don't like Accountancy or because they don't like buttons (there is the Storm, but its hardly an iPhone competitor or in the realm of the Pre). And we have those who don't want AT&T and/or Verizon.

Basically, I'm saying that the Pre's market is everyone who doesn't fit neatly into the existing iPhone or Blackberry schema. The Pre is for then the cool people crowd, neither geeky enough to have an iPhone or boring enough to have a Blackberry. This is the crowd of people who have lots of sex and drive fast cars and go to the best parties. Its for the people who live life free of old UNIX platforms and could care less about Accountancy.

Are you one of those people Mr. Van Winkle? The article's answer seems to be: no.

 

[williamvw]

Sorry, I didn't quite follow that last part. Exactly which phone will get me more sex? And do I need to get one for my wife, too? And if we each had one, when on earth would we find time to drive fast and go to parties? Maybe it's OK to be a *little* boring. ;-)

That said, you write a very cogent argument, scryer_360. It's further bolstered by the announcement since this article was published of a $200 price point for the Pre with a service contract. In the last week or two, it seems that Palm's marketing has finally ground into life, although it still pales beside that of Apple and RIM, not only in scale but also content. It remains to be seen if the Pre will be appeal beyond the tech-savvy looking for an alternative to the Big Two and penetrate the mainstream. If not, then my point still stands.

 

[Guest]

anyone not hiding under a rock in the last week noticed the 'problems' gmail had last week. The people peddling 'cloud computing' are not going to accept responsibility for my company or private data being ripped off or cracked by some no-lifer coder. I have a Tungsten T3 that syncs to my Solaris box, my Windoze box, and my laptop, Data redundancy since we know that the thing computers (and cell phones) do best and most repeatedly? is fail. I use Agendus for my PIM and would not dream of putting my business associates contact info up in the 'cloud' to be stolen amidst a bunch of hardware and software vendors pointing the finger of blame at each other.
Nevermind that the twits have done it again. Just like with the Palm problem of if you want an upgraded O/S? you have to replace your unit. Now they have a device with no SD card slot for me to stick my 32 gig transcend cards in
idiots
jccampb@tseassoc.com

 

[tracyfearson]

I remember the Newton and the original Palm.

The Newton (and some windows based devices like it) were cool sexy technological marvels.

They just didnt do anything really well and simply.

Palm did and it won out.

They also were not the first to the market.

Will they repeat there original success? Time will tell.

They have a shot.

As internal documents have indicated, Palm understands the Pre is not ideal for some businesses. Cloud may be effective and easy but, security is a concern.

Will I get one June 6th? Maybe. I hate sprint and if a quick test drive of the pre shows any issues, I will return it and wait till Verizon gets a debugged version first of next year.