Talkin' Pre -- Week ending 21 August 7

Welcome to the dog days of August. You may have heard that phrase but not really known what it meant.  Per Wikipedia:

"Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress."

Let's focus on that last part... "dull lack of progress." In a week where Brett Favre "un-retires" (again!) we had stories about Palm Pre ads (again!) and Palm Pre returns (again!), sprinkled with some excitement for developers and more noise about Apple and its fearless leader.

Let's Talk Pre!

Open for Business

The big news for developers came from Palm's announcement on Tuesday:

"Developers who wish to charge for their Palm webOS(TM) applications can begin submitting them for consideration in the Palm(R) App Catalog e-commerce beta program, which will begin in mid-September. Developers selected to participate in the beta program will have the opportunity to have their applications, both free and paid, featured in the Palm App Catalog ahead of the next wave, and to be among the first to be paid for purchases of their Palm webOS applications."

MobileCrunch's Greg Kumparak thought the whole paying with credit cards part was weird. He wrote, "In a time when every taco stand on the block is insisting that you drop at least $10 before you whip out the plastic, this seems a bit strange - I'd imagine that a hefty chunk of that 30% Palm's getting is going straight to the credit card companies.

Poaching & Steve being Steve

The week started with a profile of Steve Jobs in the Sunday London Times that Apple tried to squash and then got even more interesting when the Poaching story broke.

"Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal," Colligan reportedly told Jobs.

If there are these types of 'gentlemen's agreements' among companies to refrain from hiring competitive talent, that could be a serious problem," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. "It is a form of collusion."

Source: SiliconValley.com

ValleyWag had a great headline: "How Palm Faced Down a Tyrannical Control Freak"

ComputerWorld's Richi Jennings did a roundup of stories/comments.

MORE (!?!) on the Creepy Palm Pre Ads

AdWeek's Eleftheria Parpis did an extensive story about the Palm Pre ads ("The Girl With the Far Away Eyes: Can Palm Pre's offbeat campaign do damage to the iPhone?") that continued the ongoing debate.  This one quoted Robert Birge, CMO of Kayak and the former managing director of TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York (where he ran the Nextel and then Sprint accounts) and Michelle Farrell Emerson, vice president of marketing at Assessment Technologies Institute and former vice president of brand marketing, media and digital marketing at Sprint.  She said:

"The first spot nicely combined a strategic thought with visual wow and breakthrough potential." But the subsequent ads? Not so much. "They lost me," she says. "I'm not a believer that you have to show people the functionality of the phone for 30 seconds, but the masses are buying the iPhone. You need to show [why the Pre's] great."

Yeah... we know.

Our own Dieter Bohn said enough is enough. 

And G4 has now hopped on the parody wagon with an exorcism video that's making the rounds.

MORE (!?) on Returns and Market Share

And another "make it stop" story...  Posted by Phillip Elmer-DeWitt of the Apple 2.0 Blog talks about returns estimates released by ChangeWave Research which he states, "while hardly definitive given the sample size, it at least provides some context."

Based on a survey of 198 Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS owners and 38 Pre owners, it found that the exchange rate of the Pre (11%) does indeed appear to be higher than the iPhone (7%), but not by much.

Link to the 21-page ChangeWave report here.

Other tidbits...

Silicon Alley Insider's Chart of the Day, posted by Dan Frommer, showed "Why People Love And Hate The iPhone and Pre."

For extra credit reading, check out the MobileInsider post by Steve Smith ("Getting Media To My Fingertips"), which started off with this:

My daughter on the Palm Pre: "I don't know what to do with it. I can't figure it out." I can't tell if the new Palm is just inscrutable to her or if she is just being 17." 

The piece is mostly about mobile video and he makes some good points.

That's a wrap!