There's surely no hope left for Palm now, is there?

editor · Nov 21, 2008

RIM and Apple are soaring ahead, bridging business and corporate markets, Microsoft WM and Nokia are still selling by the bucketload, but is there any hope for Palm now?

The Centro is a great phone that sold shedloads but it's a consumer phone on a low profit margin, and their WM handsets are good, but not good enough to excite business punters.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they planned to buy BlackBerries for their employees in the next quarter, compared to 22 percent who plan on buying iPhones and just 5 percent planning on buying a Palm product. That compares August results that had RIM at 79 percent, Apple at 17 percent, and Palm at 6 percent.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10104639-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Developers are leaving the platform in droves out of sheer frustration, their new OS still hasn't even hit public beta and their stocks are plummeting.

And there's no joy for them in the latest corporate spending plans in US:

http://blog.changewave.com/2008/11/it_spending_smartphone_market.html

It'll be a real shame to see them go because the Palm OS is still one of the most elegant and easiest to use operating systems, but I can't see them hanging on by this time next year.

What do you lot reckon?

FridgeMagnet · Nov 21, 2008

No, there isn't, really.

I have myself abandoned Palm as a platform now. I don't use my TX any more because of all the appalling sync issues that come with it - Palm entirely gave up on the Mac a while back, and the third-party solutions just didn't cut it. The iTouch is a way better solution for me, despite how much I liked apps like Agendus. Nobody is writing new stuff for Palm OS now and they haven't been for ages, whereas they _are_ writing for other platforms, so I still have a good choice of apps. Furthermore, the existence of netbooks cuts off the point of many of the higher-end uses for the Palm platform. Why would I want to carry an external keyboard when, for a few ounces more, I could have a whole netbook in my bag?

editor · Nov 21, 2008

The killer for me has been the developer of the superb Note Studio competely abandoning support for the product - my copy stopped syncing a while ago and all they're offered is a refund. I've not seen anything as good on any platform, but I need something similar - and the only thing I've seen similar so far is on (sob!) Windows ruddy Mobile.

Kid_Eternity · Nov 21, 2008

Yeah they're screwed...buy out talks within a year I reckon if they don't just fold.

Shame really, I love my Centro and would have loved to see a 3g next gen Palm OS Centro 2...

This time next year I think will have retired my Centro in favour of an Android powered device.

g force · Nov 21, 2008

I'm sure the RIM and Android teams will want to snap up a few of their guys but yes, as an organisation they're looking dead in the water.

paolo · Nov 21, 2008

They seem to be having quality woes too, with 15% of Centros failing in the first year, compared with about 10% on Blackberry and 5% on iPhone.

tarannau · Nov 21, 2008

Wow, that's nearly X-Box levels of reliability there. Interested in the source of that mind - surely those returns must be putting serious holes in their bottom line. And unlike MS, they're not in a strong financial position.

editor · Nov 21, 2008

The most annoying thing is that it's not because of their products - which were years ahead of their time and the OS still holds its own against many current systems - but because of clueless fuckwit bosses who disastrously fucked about with flogging off parts of the company, a la Commodore, and kept making awaful decisions. Look at this bullshit:

Palm OS was originally developed under the direction of Jeff Hawkins at Palm Computing, Inc. Palm was later acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp., which in turn was later bought by 3Com, which made the Palm subsidiary an independent publicly traded company on March 2, 2000.

In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named PalmSource. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company on October 28, 2003. Palm (then called palmOne) became a regular licensee of Palm OS, no longer in control of the operating system.

In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by ACCESS

In December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS Garnet source code from ACCESS. With this Palm can modify the licensed operating system as needed without paying further royalties to ACCESS. Together with the May 2005 acquisition of full rights to the Palm brand name, only new operating system versions from Palm may be called 'Palm OS'.

As a consequence, on January 25, 2007 ACCESS announced a name change to their current Palm OS Garnet operating system, now titled Garnet OS.

If they'd switched to Android (and developed an emulator for Palm software) they would have had one of the hottest new phones in town.

djbombscare · Nov 21, 2008

My palm treo was probably the best phone I had.

I've spent the last 4 years or so trying to find a decent replecment one and ended up with XDA's which are ok but no palm.

editor · Nov 21, 2008

My Treo 650 was also the best phone I've ever had. All they had to do was make it a bit smaller, shove in Wi-Fi and GPS, spruce up the interface and I would have been happy.

editor · Nov 21, 2008

It's getting worse:

PalmInfocenter has received a couple of unconfirmed reports that Palm Inc. has had a round of layoffs this week. One report from a reliable source claims as many as 200 people were let go from the US team on Thursday. Most of the cuts are claimed to be in the sales and marketing departments. Sources also postulate that Palm will be closing some offices in Europe and Asia as well.

The news comes during a rather rough week for Palm's stock and the US stock market in general. Shares in Palm closed at a new all time low over continued uncertainly about the general economy and Palm's long planned turnaround. The last major round of layoffs came around this time last year when around 250 people were cut. Palm's last reported head count in August was around 1,050 employees.

The company just recently reported its fifth consecutive quarterly loss back in September. At the time Palm CEO Ed Colligan stressed that the company was "still solidly in the midst of its transformation with some significant hurdles yet to come." Palm is due to report the results of the current quarter on December 18th.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7257/a-round-of-layoffs-at-palm/

I'm amazed they employ so many people to be honest. What do they all do?

tarannau · Nov 21, 2008

I still reminisce fondly about old Psion Series 3 keyboards.

<joins misty-eyed fogey brigade>

editor · Nov 21, 2008

tarannau said:
I still reminisce fondly about old Psion Series 3 keyboards.

<joins misty-eyed fogey brigade>

Oy! Start your own Psion Series 3 thread!

Let Palm at least have a decent farewell here.

g force · Nov 21, 2008

Sales and Marketing teams.....must be relieved I'd think. It must be a pretty thankless task trying to flog what is at it's core a fine bit of kit but being completely shot down by the iPhone and Apple's huge marketing budgets and RIM producing what 4 new handsets in the space of 9 months. To top it all Google then goes and announces Android.

I doubt they'll be here in 12 months.

tarannau · Nov 21, 2008

editor said:
Oy! Start your own Psion Series 3 thread!

Let Palm at least have a decent farewell here.

Blimey, you'd think Palm would have had long enough saying farewells by now. My gawd, they've been in decline for years and years.

Shame though, but their inertia created massive spaces for competitors to waltz in through.

editor · Nov 21, 2008

g force said:
Sales and Marketing teams.....must be relieved I'd think. It must be a pretty thankless task trying to flog what is at it's core a fine bit of kit but being completely shot down by the iPhone and Apple's huge marketing budgets and RIM producing what 4 new handsets in the space of 9 months.

Here's Palm's product lines for the Palm OS.

Treo 600 - fantastic, truly innovative smartphone. Miles ahead of the competition. Made by Handspring.
Treo 650 - almost identical with a better screen and lots of neat tweaks. One of the truly great smartphones.
Treo 680 - just about identical apart from a few tweaks and a bit more memory (but with a far, far worse battery life)
Centro - exactly the same as a 680 but smaller

Not exactly cutting edge stuff, is it?

Sunray · Nov 21, 2008

I still think that they could pull the rabbit from a hat because the phones they are selling are starting to become main stream. Apple marketed the iPhone to death showing people what phones can do and people are starting to take an interest in their phone being more of a phone but perhaps not willing to spend as much as Apple want to charge.

CPU/battery power has reached a point where it can do pretty much everything people would expect, in a snappy responsive manner. I still think its a new market yet to be totally dominated and with their new OS it could do well, their seems to be enough good will for the ball to be picked up again.

g force · Nov 21, 2008

Very true...but they have to show it to analysts and tech journos within the next 6 months or the game's over. If the changes they have are as "significant" as the CEO says then they could be on to a winner but only if they can get the phone onto the high street.

They've got to create a buzz (sorry!) the same way Apple, RIM and Google have managed because there are a lot of Palm champions out there but they need something new to write about,

Piers Gibbon · Nov 21, 2008

editor said:
My Treo 650 was also the best phone I've ever had. All they had to do was make it a bit smaller, shove in Wi-Fi and GPS, spruce up the interface and I would have been happy.

THIS!

I offered you my heart and my love for ever Palm....

sniff

I'm guessing my Centro will be the last so next I'm going iPhone or what's that one with a better virtual keyboard

sigh

editor · Nov 21, 2008

Piers Gibbon said:
I'm guessing my Centro will be the last so next I'm going iPhone or what's that one with a better virtual keyboard

Read this review about the iPhone's shortcomings and you realise how Palm really got some things right the first time around.

For example: Where's the feature to mute the phone? You may point to the little toggle switch on the left side, but no, that just mutes the ringer and certain audio alerts, not the whole phone. On my old Palm Treo, the mute switch darn well muted everything, as if the switch disconnected the speaker wires themselves.

On the iPhone, there's no way to predict which sound sources will respect the mute switch. Calendar alerts do; alarms don't. These are good choices-- I like knowing that the alarm function will still wake me up even if I mute the phone before going to sleep-- but hardly intuitive.

Bottom line-- I can't find a way to make the unit completely silent without going into multiple Settings panels and applications, and even that isn't completely effective because some applications (as exemplified by the otherwise valuable Phone Aid) will turn the volume back up when they run.

Apple's calendar is shit compared to the Palm, you can't get all your mail in one inbox, the notes/memos functionality is shit, there's no cut and paste, there's no To Do list, Contacts is slow, you can't quickly record calls etc etc. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10104996-23.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The iPhone destroys the Palm's phones when it comes to looks, attractiveness and Wi-Fi, but Palm only had to shove on a fucking Wi-Fi and make the interface look like it came from this century and I'd have stuck with them...

Piers Gibbon · Nov 21, 2008

I just have to hope that in say 18 months there will be something better

makes me angry - the wilful chucking away of such potential..shame on you Palm board of directors (and I really agree with the Palm abandoned Mac post above - slack slack slack)

let's hope they prove us all wrong

djbombscare · Nov 21, 2008

Piers Gibbon said:
THIS!

I offered you my heart and my love for ever Palm....

sniff

I'm guessing my Centro will be the last so next I'm going iPhone or what's that one with a better virtual keyboard

sigh

If your used to a palm I would NOT go for an iphone. It will do your head in mate. I've had a few ramblings on the iphone thread

djbombscare · Nov 21, 2008

Piers Gibbon said:
I just have to hope that in say 18 months there will be something better

makes me angry - the wilful chucking away of such potential..shame on you Palm board of directors (and I really agree with the Palm abandoned Mac post above - slack slack slack)

let's hope they prove us all wrong

Im worried that all the companies will think from the iphone marketing machine that this is what everyone wants and will just copy it givng us no decent alternative. Just a series of clone devices

How many ipod looking players are there ?

Piers Gibbon · Nov 21, 2008

agreed..I don't really want an iphone

I do want a real keyboard...!

or I'll give that new virtual one on the storm is it? a go at least

I like the fact that Life Balance is now ported over on to the iphone...I use it as my default database for everything except addresses now

(am sad Note Studio was run on such a part time basis ed)

and I need something that synchs with my mac with zero dramas please

Sunray · Nov 21, 2008

djbombscare said:
Im worried that all the companies will think from the iphone marketing machine that this is what everyone wants and will just copy it givng us no decent alternative. Just a series of clone devices

How many ipod looking players are there ?

Hardly, they might have cloned the case but they certainly never cloned the software or the wheel, unless it was a chinese total rip off.

8 years in and it took Apple to come up with an alternative to the scroll wheel to select tracks. Everyone else just looked at it stumped and produced a round 4 way button instead. The result is that Apple had the space to themselves and now have near total dominance of the MP3 player market.

Its heading that way for the phone market unless someone takes them head on with a bit of balls and cash. Remember these are cutting edge devices and will start to dictate what people expect their phone to do in the next five years.

Sunray · Nov 21, 2008

Piers Gibbon said:
agreed..I don't really want an iphone

I do want a real keyboard...!

or I'll give that new virtual one on the storm is it? a go at least

I like the fact that Life Balance is now ported over on to the iphone...I use it as my default database for everything except addresses now

(am sad Note Studio was run on such a part time basis ed)

and I need something that synchs with my mac with zero dramas please

What is wrong with the iPhone. Its an excellent device and worth a look.

Too much talk of real keyboards here like some sort of mantra. I'll take my virtual keyboard over any overly small awkward keyboard and they make the machine too bulky for my liking.

The correction software makes it very usable indeed. If i want more than my phone provides I'll use my laptop.

Piers Gibbon · Nov 21, 2008

I hear you Sunray - and they are impressive but I have had a go on an iphone and - so far - I just cannot get a similar useability and speed out of a virtual keyboard when compared to my centro

and I do a lot of writing on mine...sms, emails, lots and lots of creative jottings etc

Sunray · Nov 21, 2008

I listen to music on mine.

Kid_Eternity · Nov 21, 2008

Without wanting to get into iPhone Vs Palm debate I really like the iPhone, the keyboard is far better for me than the Centro. A major thing that puts me off (apart from price!) is the serious lack of decent PIM software. When you're used to the excellent Agendus it's hard to move to anything less...

paolo · Nov 21, 2008

tarannau said:
Wow, that's nearly X-Box levels of reliability there. Interested in the source of that mind - surely those returns must be putting serious holes in their bottom line. And unlike MS, they're not in a strong financial position.

Figures were from SquareTrade, who do warranties or repairs, or something in that area. Based on 15,000 handsets if I remember rightly.

There's surely no hope left for Palm now, is there?

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