What Happened To Palm? 305
Ian Lamont writes "Palm's fourth quarter results came out a few days ago, and they were not pretty: Palm reported losses of 40 cents per share, for a quarterly loss of $43.4 million. It's the fourth straight quarter of losses, and it's clear that the company is not faring well in the rapidly evolving smartphone market. The Treo line is lagging after seven years, and while the Centro has done well, it's not well enough to compete with the likes of the iPhone 3G and RIM's surging BlackBerry line. New competition is on the horizon, with developers and manufacturers working on the Google Android platform and the recent news that Symbian is being open-sourced. What happened to Palm? What can the company do to effectively compete in the mobile market, and turn its fortunes around?"
They lost focus (Score:3, Interesting)
Between all the division splitting , they lost their focus. The sole idea of scrapping the palm os development and start to focus on windows mobile must tell you something.
Their current devices were fine for five years ago, but not now.
The future caught up (Score:5, Interesting)
Palm OS was brilliant at running PDA-style apps. However, that's not the direction portable computing was going, and Palm never did much to address the future. When every other platform was moving into media, Palm was proud of its third-party support calendars with more buttons.
And don't get me started about the Graffiti 2 debacle ("Easy to learn, even if you'll never get faster!"). Instead of working out a deal to keep using Jot and its trickier-but-faster strokes, they switched to that two-stroke abomination that instantly cut power users' data entry speed in half. Way to save a penny, Palm!
the SDK/IDE (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason I think RIM will linger and then die is that they don't have the economic resources to compete with the iphone. They'll linger because they are damn good at what they do do. Bussinesses like them for the present better than iphones. the iphone killer app has yet to be written. And then there's the exclusive carrier contracts. But over time they won't beable to keep up with the application dev and versatility of the iphone.
Nokia has the cash flow to try and fail four or five times from scratch against the iphone. They have the engineering chops to compete on performance. And if their first few attempts fail, the worst that happens is they lose the high end phone market till they come up with something to rival the iphone.
Android the ability to compete with the iphone on apps and speed of software innovation. It can be backed by the google cloud and that may possibly turnout to be better than the apple cloud (though apple would just switch over if that were the case, but it would erase an apple exclusive advantage).
Android + samsung can produce both awseome hardware and software at affordable prices and with substantial cash flow to back it till it catches on.
But Apple still has a killer advantage: OSX and platform integration. OSX means people can write Hub apps for the apple desktops and then have companion mobile apps for the iphone. You won't have to re-write your code or support two platforms. Or have compatibility libs. Heck you won't even have to have two IDEs: Xcode does it all. So both from the developer and consumer point of view apple is much more fascile and seamless.
Apple recently bought a low power chip maker so the horse power and battery lifr in these is going to keep getting better. Since apple will always be able to more tightly couple the OS and hardware, they are going to get every drop of power out of this thing. It used to be that it was the communication hardware that ate the batteries. Presumably nokia's better at that but with the new generation it's the computing and screen display power. Things like background service will eat your battery. Apple thus may have the better hardware strategy as well as the better software strategy.
They lost their best people to Handspring (Score:3, Interesting)
What happened is they lost their best people to Handspring. From that point on it's been all downhill.
It's the Apps... (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been a PalmOS user since 2000, when I procured my IIIc. I loved all my Palms except the 650. The 650 was nice, but crashed way too much for my likings. I now have a 680 that works much better and is a lot more stable.
There are two reasons I haven't bought an iPhone yet: PocketQuicken (by Landware) and PalmFuelLog (search google for the sourceforge.net page). Once those apps are available for the iPhone, I'll drop my Treo like a hot potato. WinCE and Blackberry are right out - don't like the interface, don't like most of the hardware (especially in Blackberry's case).
Yes, you heard it here first. The only reason Palm is still around is because people have become attached to their applications and there ain't any replacements just quite yet.
*whine* To the good folks at Landware: Get crackin'!! I want an iPhone dammit. Your app is preventing this from happening. */whine*
After my T|X died... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My story... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've owned Palm gear since .. oh around the time the original palm3x came out. Bought it from CompUSA - loved that device for about a year.
Got a good lead on a VX - and scored one. Very awesome; although the lack of being able to use aaa batteries was somewhat dissapointing, it seemed to hold a good charge. Even up until a year ago when I got rid of the unit.
Did everything with this machine. GPS, kept my contacts, even had about 15 minutes every morning where I would manually sync my business calendar with the one in the Palm to stay on top of things. Truly this machine was the best PDA I've ever had.
Fast forward to .. oh 3 years ago? When the T|X came out, told my wife that I wanted one for Christmas. And I got it! Played with that thing for about a month, using it to watch videos at the gym and playing music at work. For data entry and screen visibility, this device was awesome.
My gripes?
1. The audio out on the device is noisy with low impedance headphones. This drives my tinnitus up the wall. Constant "hisssssssssss" regardless of the volume level. This is either a product of cramming an audio amp next to the screen or just a crappy amp.
2. Screen squeal. No lie, this thing emits a vile, harsh sound from the screen anytime that it is on. It's not that noticable, but again - I have slight tinnitus in my left ear, and it makes my left ear go absolutely nuts. I believe it is in the same sound spectrum as a TV flyback - because they both do this to me. Anyways, 2 RMAs later, and they state that this problem is expected with this kind of display technology and they're not going to fix it. This seems to affect every one of their devices - go into your local staples/office max/whatever and find their Palm section (if they still have one.) If you turn them on, you're guaranteed to hear the squeal - my wife was giving me shit for not using my gift she got me, and I then walked her by the Palm section. She didn't berate me any more after that.
3. Had to RMA for failing power button. This happened about 2 months into the device, and really drove me nuts. This exact same issue happened with my Palm Vx late in life. They did fix this properly, and to this day the power button works.
I no longer use the device and it sits on my shelf due to the screen squeal. I also bought an MP3 player that plays videos (granted, on a much smaller screen) so I no longer need this one at the gym. It also doesn't accept SDHC cards (DOH!!!)
Now, my thoughts as to why they're doing bad in the market:
1. They don't fix clearly obvious issues with the device (#1 and #2 above)
2. My work laptop now has wireless access every place that I go in my company. This gives my laptop the ability to be my "pda" even though it isn't as convenient.
3. With #2 being true for a lot of people, there's just no market for a small portable repository of address books and calendars for the masses. Note - there are probably some niche areas where a PDA comes in handy, but in my line of work (Network/Voice Design) I just don't have a need.
4. Same as above, I still see a PDA and a phone combo as a niche device. Blackberry and Apple are getting this area right - by integrating with popular mail types (Exchange, Lotus Notes) that companies use to keep their employees abreast of things. I'm not sure how Palm still does this, but back in the day it was some convoluted connector that runs on your local PC. Not too handy if the laptop is sitting in the off position in your laptop bag.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a Palm user. Had he bought a Nokia with built-in SIP/VOIP client he would be able to call any US number for 1 pence a minute (that's 2 dollar cents). That's what it costs me with my VOIP provider - and there's a bloody ocean in between.
The three things that is killing palm (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Spinning off the Palm software division. One of the reasons Palm worked so well was that it's hardware and software were tightly integrated. Removing that integration turned them into just another PDA/Smartphone manufacturer with nothing different to offer. Add to that a hardware third party (the only reason they split in the first place) that basically imploded and a buyout of the software division, and you got a disaster on your hands.
2) Axing off Hotsync Server. I had more execs wanting this function than I could count just so their secretaries could update their calendars on the fly. So when they couldn't get it because Palm decided it wasn't important enough, they switched to Outlook, since Exchange could share calendars over the network. Add to that the frustration of getting a Palm to sync with Outlook without duplicating something and you got a recipe to can your palm with something that syncs right, like Windows mobile or RIM.
3) Switching from Dragonball to Xscale. My Kyocera 6035 smartphone is over 6 years old. Personally, I usually get 7 days use out of my phone before I have to recharge it, and thats with a 6 year old battery. New it used to go for 2-3 weeks with moderate usage. Show me a Palm phone that could get 3-5 days without a charge out of the box. The Dragonball processors were not the fastest chips out there, but were unbeatable in the energy usage department. When Palm switched, the devices got fatter, bigger, and sucked battery life like water, All without offering a big benefit vs older Palms. I guess you now got more memory and more functionality available but what difference does it make to the exec that just using it for his calendar and contacts? All he knows is that his palm's battery lasts 1/4 of the amount of time of his old m515 and is twice as thick. So he tosses the palm to his secretary and goes out and gets that blackberry that everyone is talking about.
Palm, death by management (Score:3, Interesting)
First PDA was an M130, amazing piece of hardware with an amazing price point for the mobile market. I was sorely disappointed when it went tits up. Bought another, died again for unspecified reasons. But I was hooked at that point and got a Tungsten E. Far more durable, in part I attribute this to the optional clamshell protective case. Pretty screen, interesting software options, but doomed due to Palm's lackluster embrace of the wireless world. The whole Palm/PalmOne branding fiasco, lack of focus on product lines that actually fit market needs, and other douchebaggery ceded too much market share to other smartphones. Palm should have beaten Apple to the iPhone years ago, PDA's are supposed to be their fucking core competency! Blackberry beat them to it even earlier.
I got a Berry 7250 with my last job and the PDA became sorely neglected. The office integration was slick and I did all of my contact management/scheduling/note crap in there, plus email, etc. For casual entertainment, the internet was more than sufficient for browsing news sites, message boards, etc. The PDA was relegated to ebook reader. I like the idea of carrying reading material with me for whenever there's unanticipated downtime.
Lost the Berry when I switched jobs. Don't really feel the lack of the berry since the new position has different responsibilities, less mobile tech support and stuff, more desk-bound. PDA is back doing service as primary downtime reading device. The iPhone has a certain lure, especially with the big price break/performance increase, but I'm trying to avoid picking one up just on gee-whiz factor alone.
What I really liked about Palm and PalmOS is that there was a real PC mentality. "Hey, it's your hardware, do whatever the hell you want with it." Early palm adopters were very hacking-oriented and they came up with uses for the device the designers never anticipated. I loved the docs2go program with the ability to sync down a copy of a word doc and edit it on the palm. The IR keyboard turned it into a proper cheap-ass laptop and was pretty much in a class of its own until the ultra-lowend laptops started coming out recently. The thing that pissed me off about all the other portable devices, even the berry, is that they're less hacker-friendly. I've yet to see a berry ebook reader or even a means of uploading a text file to it. Emails truncate anything too large, same goes for putting large amounts of text in outlook notes. Adobe never wrote an acrobat reader for it like they did with palm.
I'm still not sure how much of a walled garden the iPhone is going to be. From the sounds of it, it'll be more open than typical American cell phones but less open than the pc's we've all come to know and love. I'm interested in seeing how it develops. I'm just very sad that Palm so thoroughly suicided itself. We'd probably be five years ahead of where we are know if they had their shit together.
Re:My story... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm staying anonymous for soon to be obvous reasons.
A few years back I did QA work as a contractor on Palm products. While I didn't work on the Folio, I was in the same room as thjose who did.
When I first saw that thing my question was, "What's the point?"
The product I worked on went gold and my contract ended. I hate Treo's in ways you will never know. You have no idea how much fun it is to run through the same sequence of QA tests over and over again.
Three members of my team ended up hospitalized with serious and in one case life threatening illnesses. (All fully recovered)
The sooner Palm goes under the better.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
Had Palms since the original Visor.
Same here, the power button on my T|X failed after a few months, sync failed later, and other bits afterwards. No amount of hard resets will fix it.
My friend had the touchscreen fail twice.
Neither of will ever buy Palm again.
Went over to the Nokia n800, not as clean a solution, bulkier, but it works and has a true Debian distro.
answer: MS tried to partner with them .. :) (Score:3, Interesting)
"We don't see how the name Palm PC [windowsitpro.com] conflicts with the name PalmPilot."'
Yea, who would confuse Lindows [wikipedia.org] with Windows
Letter from Engadget, 8/21/07 (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear Palm,
Man, what a crazy year, right? We know things haven't really been going your way lately, but we want you to know that we haven't given up on you, even though it might seem like the only smartphone anyone wants to talk about these days is the iPhone. It can be hard to remember right now, but you used to be a company we looked to for innovation. You guys got handhelds right when everyone else, including Apple, was struggling to figure it out. And it was the little things that made those early Palm Pilots great -- you could tell that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to think about what made for a great mobile experience, like how many (or rather, few) steps it took to perform common tasks.
The problem is that lately we haven't seen anything too impressive out of you guys. Sure, over the past few years the Treo has emerged as a cornerstone of the smartphone market, but you've let the platform stagnate while nearly everyone (especially Microsoft and HTC, Symbian and Nokia, RIM, and Apple) has steadily improved their offerings. So we've thrown together a few ideas for how Palm can get back in the game and (hopefully) come out with a phone that people can care about. (And we're not talking about the Centro / Gandolf.) Read on.
So yeah, it was probably a smart move to recognize that you needed to offer a Windows Mobile version of the Treo to appeal to enterprise users, but there are literally millions and millions of consumers who want a high-end, powerful mobile computer that isn't built around Exchange server support. What they're looking for is a great user experience. Apple has done a good job tapping into that market, but there's still a huge opportunity out there for Palm to offer a smartphone that's just as engaging as the iPhone, but that's also open, rather than closed, and more geared towards productivity.
Frankly, you've taken a turn from being the respected underdog and innovator to repeat offender in stale gear. Every press release you issue or "leaked" photo we see these days is another dent in your already banged up armor, and really, we're not sure how much more we can take -- our loyalty has practically become an embarrassment among peers. The New York Times totally nailed it when they said "Palm is about to release a new model in its Treo line and photos leak out to silence." That said, we humbly submit a few (mainly practical) suggestions for how you can turn things around, organized by hardware, software, and other.
Hardware
Get thin - Three words: FIGURE IT OUT. If HTC, Apple, and Motorola can offer thin (and we mean friggin' thin) smartphones, you can too. We know you think the Treo is perfectly proportioned, but it's not. It's chubby. No excuses any more, ok? It doesn't have to be as thin as the iPhone, but you've gotta trim some of the fat.
Bigger, higher resolution displays - Make the screen bigger and up the resolution and you'll go a long way towards winning us back. There's no reason the 750 shouldn't have 320 x 320 (or higher) -- Windows Mobile 6 supports that, or didn't you hear? But for new devices you might want to have the keyboard slide out, like with the HTC Hermes or the Samsung i730. It's a really smart move. The long and short of it is this: if you can find some way to marry the expanse of something like the iPhone's or G900's massive, high res screens and still retain the spirit of the Palm keyboard, people will be very interested.
Speaking of the keyboard, don't mess too much with it - Apple may or not add a physical keyboard to the iPhone (our money says it won't happen), but the one the Treo has now is pretty good and it's pretty much the one thing that's keeping a lot of Treo owners from jumping ship. And from what we hear, the Centro is going to have a keyboard that's "impossible to type on" -- not
Re:this is how you can save yourselves, palm. (Score:4, Interesting)
The dropped the scroll wheel on the side that made the old blackberries have such a (in my mind) LEGENDARY interface. Honestly that was one of the best interfaces i have EVER used. They dropped it for a stupid trackball that, while pretty, is all but useless unless you use two hands to operate the phone.
I liked my 7520 too, and I agree with your comments about key size, etc. But I'm surprised by your comments about the trackball. I was more than ready to hate the trackball when I got my 8830, but surprise, I liked it more than the scroll wheel. It balances better in my hand, as the point of balance is centred on the trackball, rather than over to the right as it was with the scroll wheel.
I'm not very confident about the durability of the trackball, though. I've had it stop tracking in one or more directions twice. Turns out that a little spit and rotation gets the grit in the trackball out of the way, and you're good to go again. I suspect that over time this will become a bigger problem, as grit seems to get into the mechanism easily, and there is no complete way to clean it (remember that mouseballs used to have this problem, but you could take them apart and give them a through cleaning, which you can't with the 8830 trackball).
Your comment about the screen recessing on the 7520 points to an issue with the 8830 - the screen is *not* recessed, and mine was getting pretty scuffed up after four months use.
I had my first 8830 replaced under warranty after the keyboard went berserk. Keys started to fail, and then start working again, while other keys started to fail at the same time. It was like the problem was circulating through my keyboard; it did make life exciting though, as you found out what keys weren't working on a particular day. The biggest problem was when the Alt key and Del key weren't working at the same time. My PIN had numbers in it, which made it impossible to unlock.
Overall, I don't think that the 8830 has the durability of the 7520, and even though I do like the trackball, I don't think it is going to last in service. I never had any issue with the scroll wheel.
Re:Palm has been busy.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to write 3rd party freeware for the Palm. I was an early adopter. I had fun with it. I had to take a little time off when I had kids, and every time I tried to go back, Palm got in my way. New OS with an emulator that only runs on Windows? Every time I try to catch up with their developer resources, download an SDK maybe, they've moved to a different domain name and threw away my old password ("old" but dating back only to the previous domain move)? Gave up and took up knitting (at least the moths *appreciate* me.)
hmm. "iphone" you say? I'm so there.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
I sometimes question the veracity of all the Treo haters out there. I've never met a single one, in person, that ever had a problem with theirs. And I've met a heck of a lot. I've been writing code for mobile devices since the late 90's, for every mobile OS that's come along, and the device I use for my day to day work is always a PalmOS device.
Just because they don't keep tweaking the OS doesn't mean that it sucks. It just means that it does what it's supposed to do.
They're working on a new OS...Just like Google... (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter Linux. Palm has been working on a Linux kernel based OS for the past couple years now. When I was down there awhile back, they were hiring Linux guys in a major way. They're at least as far along as Android, and maybe further. The main reason you don't hear about Palm's Linux distro is because they keep tight lipped about things, unlike Android, which has been more about marketing than about actual development now for a long, long time. The thing is, Palm takes longer because they tend to do wild things like...make developer tools available before the thing is released...stuff that Apple could never be bothered with doing properly.
Re:They lost focus (Score:4, Interesting)
wasted millions of dollars developing a questionable gadget that no one asked for--the Foleo
I might have bought a Foleo but now I have an eeePC, which was a huge hit for Asus. Some of the specifics like the tie in to the Treo were a bad idea, but the hardware platform might have taken off if they had persisted with it.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
I got WarpSpeed for my T|X and the screen whine went away. If it's a universal hardware problem, how is there a software fix for it?
I also bought PowerDigi since two trips back to support didn't fix the digitizer, which was off by a quarter of an inch along the left edge of the screen.
$30 of software add-ons to make it work the way it should have out of the box. Great. Between that and the squishy power button and I'm done with Palm devices. They had an opportunity to do something awesome and continue to compete, but that time passed a while ago.
Once there is a scientific calculator and spreadsheet capability for Apple handhelds, I'm getting an iPod Touch.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
The screen squeal can be fixed by a small utility called WarpSpeed from palmpowerups.com
You are 100% correct - and this application DOES fix the screen squeal on mine. However, I truly wonder how many people use these devices (any of the palm lineup) and don't realize this?
And then the person sees that they will have to pay for a solution. That goes over like a turd in a punchbowl. It did with me, and to be honest even though the application was only ten dollars, I thought to myself "self, why would you pay for something that fixes a flaw in this device?" Don't get me wrong, I will pay money for features/functionality in an application (or car or house etc) but I do not pay after the fact to fix manufacturing defects.
So, I have an app that I found (open source, I believe) called WhineHack. Does the trick - just tried it today, but there are too many other flaws with this unit for me to think about carrying it in my day-to-day routine again.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=155828 [sourceforge.net]
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a universal problem; mine doesn't do it, and never has.
however, after I got mine, it was so frakking cool several of my friends got one, and it was maybe 50/50 on the screen whine. one of the 12 had a power button bad out of the box.
I've never had any hardware problems, at all. in 2+ years. everything has always worked exactly as advertised, and usually better than advertised.
the only actual complaint I have is that they have updated, once, the presets that allow the palm to passthru to the internet via your cellphone. and that was in 2006. I'd say probably 9 out of 10, or maybe even more, can't get on the internet using their cellphones. and it's something that would probably be pretty simple to fix; I've examined the existing ones and their just isn't that much information there.
aside from that, no real problems; little petty stuff, like some of the most ancient Palm apps don't work with the New & Improved flash memory, and damn it, there is no reason this shouldn't run Linux. it should have been running Gentoo a week after it was released. I also think I can't use one of the wired keyboards with it, only the bluetooth one (I haven't tried, but thats the impression I get). with Bluetooth active, my 2 year old battery only last about 2 hours, with it off, 6-8 hours easy.
The browser does sort of suck, but I put Sun Java on it and Opera Mini, and about the only thing I can't do on the web is Flash and streaming video. I'll put that under the "this thing should have had Linux since the week after it came out" category.
I use it for: 1) Mobile coms, the WiFi works great, the built in eMail client works great, the AIM chat client works great, it pretty much rocks. 2) eBooks. I've raided project Gutenborg austrailia and got enough classic SF and other great stuff to half-way fill up a 1gb SD card. I've read probably 2-3 books a week since last October, wherever I'm at if I'm not busy I can just pop it out and read, I've even started buying mobipocket books instead of continuing my 2 paperbacks a month dead tree habit. with it's 480x320 screen, it's easy to read. maybe not up to kindle, but then the kindle doesn't let me edit spreadsheets and download ISO's 3) that screen means it's great for watching videos; grab the freeware version of TCPMP and you can play everything but realmedia (terrible loss that). 4) you know, it works pretty good at being a PDA. 5) Typepad. whenever i want to maximize my pretentiousness, I have the tools. 6) you can get a GPS add-on card for it. and it runs tom-tom. I usually just use the google maps application. 7) you can fit a lot of MP3's on A 1gb SD card. 8) Quake, monkey island.
My 17 year old son borrows it for the NES, SuperNES, GB, GBA, GBC, PS1 emulation. it has a bunch of other emulators (By the way, if anyone knows of a DOS for Palm, I would love to play Xcom or MOM on it every once in a while.
My 15yo daughter is trying to be a photographer, and there are metric boot loads of applications for photography, plus she can see what her pictures look like with some detail out in the middle of nowhere.
Now, you may be asking yourself, why the heck did this idiot list all this? I wanted to point out that the Palm corporation has exactly one thing, and one thing only to blame for doing badly, and that is lousy support. the T/X and the lifedrive are simply phenomenal devices, if they would have had one developer spend a couple of months doing a Linux build for it, the damn thing would be THE geek tool. and they STILL COULD. there is nothing out there that competes with the T/X; there are a variety of devices that do one, or maybe 2 things better, maybe. They have no excuse.
Simple Thing: 3G was missing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Update the interface already! (Score:3, Interesting)
On top of that, they leave out a lot of software that should be included for basic functionality. Their sync software doesn't address memory cards. The best you can do is upload to the card, assuming the file type you're transferring is supported by a program installed on the device. You have to buy a program to let your computer recognize installed memory cards as a flash memory storage device. How much would it cost them to snatch up one of the little companies that makes one of these programs and install it by default?
It's pretty clear they've moved on. I'm guessing they just plan to cruise along with no development expenditures for as long as they can before the market dries up and they get bought by a competitor.
Re:My story... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm that's odd because when I read your post I thought 'shill for Palm'. Seems rather odd that you would accuse others in this way. Looks like projection to me.
Now some of your earlier posts make it clear that you ado in fact have an interest in this area, "I'm someone whose spent his entire career in the mobile arena," and the topics you post on make it rather clear that you are working for one of the phone developers.
I am pretty well known in the Internet security field and you can find plenty of posts describing my issues with the palm on my blog. I am not involved in mobile phones except to the extent that they now have Web browsers and I was involved in the design of HTTP.
Re:The future caught up (Score:4, Interesting)
Just Some Guy wrote:
I strongly agree that Graffiti 2 (G2) was not an improvement over Graffiti 1 (G1). G2 was one of the biggest disappointments with my Palm T/X, so much so that I purchased TealScript specifically so I could program my T/X to use the G1 pen strokes (including the easier alternate ones). Regardless of the advantages in changing the input system, changing it is like changing the arrangement of the keys on a keyboard.