Palm’s much-delayed linux-based mobile operating system will be re-announced next month at CES alongside new hardware. Wired’s Priya Ganapati says its the firm’s “last, best shot at survival.”
“It’s quite likely, actually close to a certainty, that they will show a new OS, new user interface and probably new hardware,” says Lawrence Harris, an analyst for Wall Street brokerage firm CL King & Associates. “This is Palm’s last shot to prove it has what it takes to survive in a very competitive market.”
When analysts talk like this (“actually close to a certainty”), it’s fun to imagine the consequences should the proposed scenario not happen. Would that be news?
Take, for example, the eternal predictions of an Apple tablet PC. If Apple doesn’t announce one when an analyst intimates that it might, there are no consequences. Nothing is really at stake.
But what if Palm did nothing at CES? The idea of it is absurd: the story of Palm’s coming “hail mary” moment is most interesting because it’s already been written, and all it has to do is turn up.
Previously:
• Palm Death Watch: Revenue falls 41% short of projections
Update: It’s a new operating system, reports Business Week, called “Nova”:
With about six quarters of cash currently in the bank, Palm’s last best hope may be Nova, to be released by mid-2009. Cash-strapped carriers are loath to take on the cost of supporting another platform and software developers are busy building software for other devices, including the iPhone, BlackBerry, and phones that use Google’s (GOOG) Android software. “If they can’t show me a large, active audience, I’m not going to be interested,” says Jeff Holden, CEO of Web 2.0 company Pelago, maker of a social networking tool for the iPhone. “At this point in the game, you’re toast unless you have something completely unbelievable.”
I used to love my Palm Pilot. No anymore.
1) I HATE the new Graffiti. What was wrong with the old one?
2) I HATE their performance-numbers-driven tech non-support. While they may read your email, they don’t parse it. They do keyword searches and send you a message that doesn’t address your questions, immediately followed by another saying that they were glad they could fix your problem – which usually arrives half-an-hour after you reply to their first message telling them that they obviously didn’t read the first message.
3) I HATE the new Graffiti. I stopped using my Palm Tungsten E for input soon after replacing my trusty old Palm II. Try doing the letters i and t, or anything involving punctuation. Gah!!!!
4) Whatever happened to Keep It Simple, Stupid?
5) An example: why not supply a cable that can charge my Tungsten E via USB supplied power? How come Belkin was able to come up with this, but not Palm?
I hope they die a slow, lingering death…
Re: Graffiti: they lost a patent lawsuit over the old version.
See the interest Palm stories stir up?
Crickets.
As I disassembled and fixed my 755p’s keyboard this past weekend, I realized that I would almost certainly have to move away from Palm phones after this. I can’t imagine that Palm will actually deliver on a new phone (or Nova OS) this time. A shame, after 12 years of carrying a Palm (in one form or another).
As joel told me on the subway last week: the iPhone has won, and it’s just a matter of the world realizing it.
New OS? Fixing the wrong problem. What Palm has to do to regain market share is fix the touchscreen calibration problems. (And, yeah, I too prefer the original Graffiti, though there are some other gestural-text systems now worth looking at.)
It’s a perfectly capable box for the applications I actually want to run on it… if the hardware hadn’t become so problematic.
As a friend of mine points out, palmtop-in-a-phone is actually a bit suboptimal because it means using the other functions runs down your phone battery. What I really want is a palmtop which can bluetooth to my phone for telephony apps.
I’m with Technogeek (#5): I want a PDA that can use Bluetooth and whatever phone/plan I happen to have for connectivity.
The Palm TX actually hit that sweet spot pretty well, except for Graffiti 2 (which I replaced with MyKbd and the Metropolis layout) and that minor detail of not being updated for five years.
If my iPod Touch had Bluetooth tethering, it’d be a nearly complete replacement. As it is, it’s still a big improvement in many areas.
IMO, Palm is dead, they just haven’t stopped twitching yet. New OS? Too little, too late.