Pristine_Condition said:
That's gotta be good news for Sprint and their customers. It appears the Palm Pre, and maybe even Palm itself, are nearing inconsequential status, or perhaps even death:
Ouch. The Pre did nothing to curb the iPhone. It just moved a few customers around, most of whom were already in the Sprint system.
Sprint needs a product people can really be excited about, and the Pre obviously didn't sell up to hype. They run enough ads for the thing...but I guess ad buys weren't enough.
And worse yet, the popular theory in the investment community--that WebOS would at least be good for generating interest for a Palm buyout/takeover/merger from/with another player doesn't seem to be as likely as it once was either:
Double ouch.
This is far from the first analyst starting to murmur that all is not well in Pre Land. I liked some things about the Pre too, but think it's pretty clear that Palm just didn't shoot far enough, especially in terms of supporting the app development community (reports of the shortcomings of the first SDK were rampant) and this is one area where Android as a platform is really exciting.
I'm so glad Android is really starting to roll with some better hardware now. I'm a happy iPhone customer, but we need the competition in the market. I don't worry about Apple being complacent, (they never were with an 80% iPod marketshare,) but I absolutely fear what AT&T would do if they had no one nipping at their heels.
Palm made a few big missteps with WebOS that I spotted from the beginning. While their focus on eye candy and social networking netted it much more press than an Android device has gotten so far, it was only a distraction so people wouldn't realize that Palm has no clue how to work with developers (anymore.) Their biggest mistake was was trying to minimize the impact developers could have on a fledgling new platform, and is the direct opposite of Google's approach with Android.
Almost
a year before an Android device hit, there was an SDK for it. And not "just" an SDK, either, what they released in November 2007 was astoundingly mature (even if the OS
itself wasn't at the time.) The sheer depth and scope of the included examples, documentation, and emulator is truly remarkable for an "early peek"- and it was all cross-platform. I still have incredible respect for the emulator in particular; this application single-handedly runs the entire phone stack right on your PC, and links up with the SDK to run tests of your apps. Google, in simple terms, nailed it.
And now Google's reaping the rewards. Something I think most people missed was the amount of apps for each platform in the pic I posted.
Right now, Android has 8,000 apps. Eight thousand. When the MyTouch 3G launched less than a month ago, T-Mobile pegged that number at around 6,300. This is incredible growth and
will shift the market in Android's favor in respect to WebOS.
As for the dragon in the room I haven't mentioned- yes, the iPhone is still wildly ahead right now. But I have my own reasons to believe it will be slain eventually.
PS- Even though the Pre got tons of commercials, they all sucked. No getting around it.
Fake Steve put it best:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs said:
You know there's an old saying (it's either Steve Martin or Sun Tzu, I can never remember) that goes, "When your opponent is committing suicide, get out of his way." That's how we feel about these Pre ads. They're so bad that the ad guy who created them is being grilled by Advertising Age and is defending them by saying, in effect, that yes they are terrible, but that's a good thing, because now everyone is talking about the Palm Pre. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when he's sitting in a conference room using that line on Ruby and trying to get paid. I used to think that the Borg's advertising could never be outdone. But you know what? Ruby & Co. have done it. Well done, Ruby. Well done.
