Rumors of Palm's death seem to have been greatly exaggerated. I was expecting very little out of their announcement, but this thing looks great.

The one potential problem I see is difficulty typing in landscape mode (keyboard doesn't swivel and no on-screen keyboard) but otherwise this could really be a player, especially for people who are already on Sprint and hate touchscreen keyboards (both apply here.)

Dumb name, though.

Okay, you want to develop some kewl phone app. Which platform(s) do you target? iPhone? Blackberry? Android? Windows Mobile? Palm Pre? Symbian? Am I forgetting anybody?

The iPhone certainly has a commanding lead in market share, leaving everybody else to duke it out over the #2 slot. Now if only Android and the Palm Pre's WebOS could just merge together and create one half-way decent platform with multiple vendors supporting it.

iPhoneOS is the one without copy-and-paste or background apps, and it's the "decent platform"? Or am I misinterpreting?

I was just having a conversation with cow orkers today about this, except for game consoles instead of phones. The fact is that commanding leads in market share (see the PS2 in 2005) can evaporate quickly when a hot new competitor comes along (see the XBox 360 in 06, and then the Wii now.)

Despite these shifts in market share dominance, they're all legitimate players, because tools and libraries exist to make ports easier, and because there are enough customers out there that you can be profitable even if you target a single platform.

Likewise, I can see room for 3-4 major players in the smartphone market. Blackberry has their own niche and loyal base in the enterprise, so they'll probably stick with that. Android doesn't have any gee-whiz hardware out there yet, but don't underestimate Google. Symbian will probably remain a minor player and maybe be squeezed out by the re-emergence of Palm.

I think Apple should take this seriously.

Even if it isn't "decent" due to lacking those features, it doesn't seem to be harming the amount of money developers are making on the iPhone.

If they'll let me use it on my SERO plan (and I can hack it to tether) I'll probably be in for one. The only program I'd miss leaving windows mobile is microsoft's live search mobile thing.

My father has been looking to replace his Treo 650p, I'm sure he'll be excited. I believe he's has a palm pilot longer than he's had a cell phone, and I've been encouraging him to move to an iPhone but told him he could wait til CES to see what Palm could pull out of their hat.

Among the younger people I know, there's some iPhone backlash brewing. It's admittedly a small sample size, but the wow features for those of us who don't have an iPhone are now taken for granted, and the Steve Knows Best problems are starting to be noticed more. Look at the excitement the mere speculation of an "iPhone pro" generated on gizmodo.

I've got the SERO plan as well. My guess is they'll make folks transition off of SERO (which was technically supposed to be for employees and close friends to begin with) to get the latest and greatest phone.

As for tethering, Sprint's been pretty liberal about it with current phones and plans, so it's certainly possible they'll continue that policy.

If the final version of this ends up being as good as it looks right now and it's under $300, I'm probably in.

Palm might as well start planning the Pre Post-Mortem. Seriously, the handset might do brisk low-volume business but Palm's days are still numbered. It's not a question of if but when.

Comparing a mobile platform to a console is somewhat irrelevant. If you were to make the comparison against groups of handsets I'd give you that, but we're talking about platforms here that have a life beyond a single product cycle.

I see two major platforms going forward. iPhone and Android. Three in the short term, but Windows Mobile is on its last legs and I don't think anything Microsoft does in 2009 will save it. Even if they threw every last penny at it they made in every other division of the company.

Oh, and in terms of support by third party developers? No one is going to support anything but the two platforms I mentioned above.

If you're developing for financial gain, you'd have to have rocks in your head to spend any time whatsoever developing anything for any platform other than iPhone right now.

There's probably big money developing business apps for the Blackberry, but I otherwise agree with you that the iPhone is where it's at, at least for now.

Remember when Symbian was supposed to be the grand, all-encompassing consortium operating system galore? Maybe that's where Android ends up. Maybe Palm's UI ends up riding on top of Android, under the hood. Maybe the future is Zune.

Or, maybe AT&T just keeps getting worse and worse and people leave in droves for some great low-ball deal from Sprint, rescuing this Palm thing. Who knows? Every time I have to deal with AT&T customer service on the phone, I get one step closer to wanting to dump them.

I'll agree with "right now," but in the next month or two, Google will be rolling out the pay system for their app market, and that should be pretty appealing to developers. Sure, the base is far smaller right now, but I think the biggest reason I would imagine Android would be more appealing to developers is that there's no arbitrary approval process. As far as I've seen, that has been a horror story for many devs, and many of them don't want to sink a lot of money into an app that they seem to have a 50/50 shot of getting approved. That's how you end up with most of them making money on apps like that stupid iFart.

The big problem with Android is going to be lack of control over the hardware and the version of Android that gets shipped with any given phone. I foresee huge issues in the future with apps that "work on phone x, but not on y, works on z, but not feature q".

Plus the phone manufacturers won't be able to resist dicking around with the UI, the end result in a couple of years being a bunch of phones all with slightly different UIs with a bunch of apps that don't quite fit in with the UIs of any given phone.

Which is a shame, because I think Android has potential.

Much as I hate Apple's restrictions and their glacial approach to changes functionality, I love the end result on the iPhone.

The Apple approval horror stories are getting to be few and far between. They're getting to the point where they're approving almost anything now.

The last items I've seen denied which I thought somewhat of a travesty were books containing adult language/themes. I'm not sure if that situation has been remedied yet.

The iPhone has a better set of development tools at this stage. There's also no arguing about whether or not the potential money to be made from iPhone app sales is huge. (huuuuge) It would be one thing if there was a particular cinderella story, but we're seeing quite amazing news and results from a very large number of developers. I know a few personally (making decent coin) and they don't publish their details, like the majority of others out there.

I would only expect the situation to slide more in favor of the iPhone when Apple can loose the handset on other carriers in the US. Can't forget of course that the iPod also plays a significant role here. I don't see Android or anyone else catching the iPhone platform without a huge market upset. Anything's possible. Just not probable. One need look only as far as the iPod in the music player category for an example from Apple.

In the web world, look at eBay - an auction site is vastly more simple to create and promote than a product like the iPhone, but it hasn't looked like anyone could ever match or beat eBay for over 8 years now. You have a few other marketplaces carving out their own little niches, but eBay remains king with no signs of losing its crown. I expect it to be like this for the mobile platform landscape. Android will have a niche, maybe even a significant one, but the iPhone will continue to be the worldwide leader for the foreseeable future (like it or not).

This is an invalid comparison. An auction seller cannot sell his item on two sites at once, so it's stupid for him to not choose the one with the most potential buyers. A software developer can sell his product through an unlimited number of channels.

I'm sorry, but I don't think saying "approval horror stories are getting to be few and far between" proves your point. That doesn't tell me that Apple is doing anything differently at all. What it says to me is that developers have been scared out of creating unique, interesting apps and into creating to-do lists, games, and iFart apps (have I mentioned how stupid I think that app is?).

I do think that Andy's point is an excellent one, and one I've worried about myself. I have a G1 (which I adore), but I'm worried what will happen with the app market in the future as more devices are released. My hope is that programmers will be able to specify hardware compatibility when they put the app on the store, so that when you go to the market on your device it will only show apps available for your device. But that depends on the developer, and I've seen at least a half dozen apps show up on the store, for example, that were only written for use in various Asian countries.

Anyway, Bruno, I hope you know that I agree with you that the iPhone is a juggernaut in this space, and not much is going to be able to overthrow it. I'm just hoping Android does well because I'm invested in it now. I love my G1. I couldn't stand actually using the iPhone and it's (IMO) horrible keyboard. The iPhone isn't for everyone, and other phones are coming out to give people options.

Are you really trying to compare Ebay's stranglehold on the auction market to iPhone's growing, but by no means dominant share of the smartphone market? Nokia is still king worldwide, Blackberry is king of the U.S. enterprise market, and Palm still has over a 10% world market share despite ancient hardware and virtually no OS development in years.

The iPhone's meteoric rise is certainly impressive, but it's a very fickle market, with a lot of incentives for people to jump from carrier to carrier (and often platform to platform) when contract expiration rolls around. iPod/iTunes will provide a bit of vendor lock-in, but I can't imagine EBay-like market dominance is possible in the next five years.

Also, the iPhone followed a long period of complacence in the smartphone market, where there was no real innovation at all for years. As such, it was perceived as revolutionary. But it pushed other smartphone makers to actually improve their products, and we're just now starting to see the results of that.

I think Tony's comparison to game consoles is quite valid. We'd been at the tail of the previous generation for a long time. It's not terribly surprising that the first in the new generation sells well (especially considering Apple's marketing prowess). We'll have to wait and see if it can retain its smartphone market share once other units of the same generation really start reaching market.

(Remember how dominant the Dreamcast was until the PS2 his the market? Remember how quickly Sega completely left the market after that? I'm not saying that Apple will do the same thing, but, rather, that we don't know what will happen with the competition until the competition actually appears.)

I'm not sure whether or not I like the comparison between game machines and smartphones. Certainly, that comparison works great when talking about game machines and old-school phones. When the only thing in your phone that you can really customize is your contact list, the friction to changing phones is very low. On the other hand, when you've had an iPhone for a while, you've built your life around it. Changing to a different phone is non-trivial. How will you sync? What about the apps that you've bought? There's clearly more friction holding you in place, and that translates to a first-mover advantage for Apple. Still, if I ask myself how I actually use my iPhone, I mostly just make phone calls, read email, and surf the net. I occasionally use the calculator. I sometimes use the mapping app. I rarely run the 3rd party apps I've installed.

Of course, I've got a Mac, and an iPhone was the obvious choice since it syncs painlessly. Still, I'm migrating more and more of my life into Google. The Android phone is all about Google integration, and it looks like the Palm Pre is similarly aimed at supporting that, as well as more traditional Microsoft Exchange integration.

Meanwhile, I'll hand it to the Palm Pre for having serious eye candy to rival the iPhone. None of the other smartphone vendors have eye candy as good. An interesting question is whether Apple's going to flex its patent muscles and go after Palm. A patent lawsuit like that, with countersuits and everything else, would be a battle to behold.

Actually, I think you meant the opposite of what you wrote there.

There's no arguing that the iPhone doesn't have a better set of development tools at this stage.

Cheers

Oddly enough, it is that iTunes lock in that is preventing the iPhone from being an option with my company because some IP lawyer thinks that might be a way for information to leak out from the company. ATT is now the exclusive provider of anything telephony related (to include web-based stuff) but the iPhone isn't being offered as a replacement for the Blackberry.

Are you serious? Do you think people buy a game console and that's the end of the commitment? People dump huge amounts of money into software and accessories for their game consoles, too. Yeah, okay, there's not as much downside to having two consoles as there is to two phones, but think about the market share that Sony kept when the PS2 was able to play PSone games, despite the fact that those people apparently were interested in playing games they already owned, which would mean that they already owned a PSone.


Well, the thing about the iPhone, in addition to being a generational improvement on smartphones, is that it has brought smartphones to the masses. You never used to see a mass of people on the streets with a PalmOS or WinCE or Blackberry phone, but now folks working at the Arby's have an iPhone. There will certainly always be a segment of the market that is uninterested in paying a premium for smartphones, but that market is shrinking.

My point being that people may start thinking of smartphones as the default phone choice. Of course, you do have a point that people might start basing decisions about new phones on their investment in their old phones, but my point is that I think that the smartphone market is still expanding dramatically, and there will continue to be a lot of new users for many years to come.

That wasn't the comparison I was trying to make. I should have been more specific, but I did say "web world" as opposed to "auction world." I was talking about something much simpler than this. The effort it takes and the likelihood of anyone toppling the 800lbs gorilla in a given market. In the case of eBay they're the 8000lbs gorilla. Apple is also at that point with the iPod and quickly putting the iPhone in the same position.

And my argument is that the iPhone has no competition. It has basically created a new market. Two, really: consumer smartphones and a new generation of smartphones in general. That certainly gives it a large advantage, but it's not unstoppable.

I'll totally buy the notion that the iPhone could become the 800 lb gorilla, but that differs greatly from your earlier statement that it was already the worldwide leader.

There is no uncontested worldwide leader in smartphones right now. The field is wide open, and I think it'd take at least another year or two of iPhone's current sales figures to get to the point where it could be considered the leader.

Feel free to mark this post. In 5 years time I expect the iPhone platform's dominance to match or surpass the perception of eBay's stranglehold in the auction game. I'm almost willing to say "significantly surpass."

No one else (and I do mean no one else) is establishing a viable long-term platform other than Apple and Google at this point. Palm has been all over the map in the past 10 years. They're done. WinMo is a path to nowhere.

Blackberry will continue to do well in the enterprise market in the short term, but it's completely washed up before it even took off in the consumer space. I wouldn't be surprised to see a BlackBerry service running on Android and iPhone handsets in the future.

And Mark, about dev-tools, I'm not discounting what's available for Android/Linux, but the set of APIs for the iPhone is a much sweeter piece of cake. I don't expect Google to be able to ever match Apple on this front, no matter how much contribution they get from the open source community.

Again, console comparisons are irrelevant because none of the makers really define their products as a long-term platform. Sure, you could play PS1 games on a PS2 and you can play GameCube games on a Wii. Besides, the PS2 continued to outsell other newer consoles for a long time, including in software sales.

The mobile platforms are most comparable to desktop platforms. In that light, let's say iPhone will be where Windows is on the desktop and Android will be where Mac OS is. The other guys will carve out the remaining couple of percentage points between them.

BTW, Apple had (as of October of 2008) enough cash on hand to buy Palm approximately 37 times over and almost enough to buy RIM at recent trading prices. It's amazing how far they're going on what is compared to someone like MS, a shoestring budget. Anyone know how much MS has already bled on WinMo?

It's not the installed volume leader as a platform yet. It's already the leader in many markets based on quarterly unit sales however. And it's already close to the 800lbs Gorilla as a viable development platform for third-parties.

I think the ramp is going to easily surpass iTunes initial growth rate. Just wait until the really sweet applications in development now are released.

BTW, I don't have an iPhone. I do have an iPod Touch which I bought for development and testing purposes though. It's used heavily as a remote control for SqueezeBox as well.

So many people like to predict Apple's failure in any given market that it's become the default thing to do - moreso than any praise they get in the media. I can't believe how many "professionals" (analysts, journalists and the like) even fail to mention that the iPhone has done what it's done in only its second minor hardware revision and scarcely over 6 global availability. Application development and the online store are in their absolute infancy. There's a ton of garbage software released for it. The crap:quality ratio isn't likely to change for the better either. But the volume of releases will continue to increase. It's going to be important and valuable to consult trusted resources to find the best of what the platform has to offer. Sort of reminds me of Windows software availability.

??? We're in agreement there. I was just pointing out that your accidental wording indicated you thought Apple was way behind.

Cheers

Maybe I need to read both what I wrote AND what you wrote again. I'm trying to do too many things at once here.

Replying to emails, reading up on some CES news, checking stock prices, playing Pirates! and installing two new Seagate 1.5TB drives into a small RAID box (had to update firmware on drives and chat with Seagate - also while posting here).

My personal verdict: Pre looks cute. And Colligan has his head way (way) up his own arse. He's trying to do a Steve Jobs in recent comments to press it seems.

There, made an edit. Now it's less colorful but plainly obvious what I mean.

Okay, on the BBS's calendar.


I'll just point out that since the iPhone explicitly prevents developers from running apps in the background, that is currently impossible. Not saying it can't or won't change. Just pointing out the current state of affairs.

I don't think either Tony or I are predicting Apple or the iPhone to fail. We just don't think there's been enough evidence yet to assume that it's definitely going to be the supremely dominant platform. (I don't think either of us is even saying it won't be dominant; just that the question is still in the air.)

The lack of background apps on the iPhone is, we can only assume, a consequence of Apple's goal to get the most battery life as they possibly can out of the thing. Presumably, they'll evolve the thing to either support it, or have enough hooks that you don't desperately need it.

I'd say it's a bit less clear how strong Android is versus how weak BlackBerry is. Certainly, BlackBerry is widely loved in the business universe, and the new stuff seems to be built from a different codebase than the old stuff.

If you said I had to bet my money on either BlackBerry or Palm for who's got the most market share in 5 years, I'd go with BlackBerry in a snap. I will give Palm credit for pulling off a hell of a demo.