Opinion: Fool’s four-month follow-up 25
In the end of December, he referred to it as “D-Day. Time to do -- or die trying.” The “he” is Fool.com’s Tim Beyers. The “it” was Palm’s press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where Palm was expected to "debut its Nova smartphone operating system."
On January 12, after the CES unveiling of the Palm Pre and the new webOS operating system, he seemed to gush, “Impressed? You should be.” He also remarked, “Today, the Pre is a contender. In six months, it may not be. Hurry, Palm. This opening won't last long.”
Now here we are four months later and the headline that’s ricocheting its way around the blogosphere is “Palm's Pre: Dead on Arrival?” which just so happens to appear in an article Mr. Beyers wrote.
So what exactly is Beyers saying?
Opening gone? Clearly, without an official launch date being announced, but a lot of buzz with May 16 and June 29 being kicked around, “the opening” he referred to may already be gone.
Opening not that big? Mr. Beyers points out that the "fat middle of the market” may be too little:
If 37% of surveyed smartphone buyers want a BlackBerry and 30% want an iPhone, Palm gets to slug it out with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the global smartphone market leader, and Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android partners for the remaining third.
He also said this:
“I'll grant that Palm deserves kudos for what we've seen thus far. Its webOS software offers a fast track to mobile application development and deployment -- Pandora created a version of its system for the Pre in just three days -- and its card-deck navigation scheme is more innovative than anything I've experienced on my iPhone.
Too bad neither is enough to make good on McNamee's hopeful prediction. Not by the numbers we've seen so far.”
I feel a baseball analogy coming on…
World Series in October? Forget about it, we’ve just moved it up two months and you’re clearly not a player. That’s pretty much what he states in the article. And his “scouting report” comes from a survey of 4,292 cell phone owners conducted by ChangeWave, a subsidiary of InvestorPlace Media, LLC, that gauged consumer reaction to the Palm Pre launch and also focused on the consumer impact of Apple’s just announced iPhone upgrades.
In August, the Phillies were still trailing the Mets in the NL East. How many people surveyed back then had picked the Phillies to win it all?
Not that there are a lot of parallels between baseball and smartphones… but then again, you can make numbers tell the story you want to hear. In this case, maybe Mr. Beyers, an iPhone user, is pulling for “his guys” to win. Hey, I’m just saying maybe.
No doubt a lot of the Palm faithful are hoping for a Tampa Bay Ray-esque rise to the top. Point being, we all are going to keep writing and opinionating and reporting on what others are writing, opinionating and reporting, until Palm finally unleashes the Pre into the world and we all can see for ourselves if it and the new webOS are legitimate contenders.
"It ain't over till it's over," right Yogi?
Note: In 1973, Yogi Berra’s Met trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9 games in the NL East, but rallied to win the division title on the next to last day of the season.
Other notable quotables:
“Palm's (Nasdaq: PALM) Pre smartphone, feature-rich though it may be, appears doomed.” – 14 April 2009
“Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) met the challenge I and others put before it at last week's Consumer Electronics Show.” – 12 January 2009
“Can there be any doubt that a breakthrough in handwriting recognition -- Graffiti 3.0, perhaps -- would lead to commercial success?” – 29 December 2008
25 Comments
Palm HAD it also (the community following), but let it erode through stagnation of the platform.
The iPhone was not revolutionary (despite Steve Jobs' use of the term). There were, and have been, a multitude of touch-screen smartphones available for years before the iPhone was introduced (Palm Treo, Nokia/Symbian, etc.). What WAS revolutionary was the marketing of the iPhone. Apple has always been good at advertising. This is not to say that the iPhone isn't a good product. It's just that its competition doesn't enjoy the level of exposure that the iPhone has had. If that playing field had been more level, the iPhone would not have been seen as "revolutionary", but merely a "me-too" product.
In my opinion, if Palm wants to sell the Pre, they need to advertise it the way Apple advertises the iPhone. Don't rely on Sprint (or any other carrier/operator) to advertise the Pre. Sprint's priority is to sell their network (not the Pre), thus the Pre will not get the advertising treatment it needs if left up to Sprint. Palm needs to advertise their product (on TV, during primetime). It will do two things: 1. Advertise the product properly and 2. show that there is a REAL company behind the product--not just some carrier that only cares about getting people to subscribe to their network.
The reason that the iPhone is so popular is because it was introduced to the masses when they didn't know what a smartphone could do. Apple showed them by showing off the interface and telling people what the phone could do for them besides just being a cell phone.
Watching an Apple iPhone commercial, the audience has no doubt that the iPhone is more than just a phone. All the "clever" little applications that they can get for it...(many of which are just front-ends for specialized websites, but who cares--it works)...Apple's showing off of those apps speaks to people's hearts: "What can this do for ME?" That's the kind of thinking that Palm needs to embrace.
The name "Palm" used to mean something and carry a lot of weight in the hand-held industry. That name can mean something again if Palm gets out there and lets people know they are still alive and a viable option.
Maybe that survey data needs to be double checked when more than 4% of their sample knows the Pre exists. It's probably more likely that 37% want a physical keyboard, and 30% want a touch screen. Sounds to me like that makes 71% of the sample base who would get the Pre if they knew about it.