If you read the quote Tom posted you'll see they weren't referring specifically to the Pre in the initial comment. The press person specifically mentioned "Andoid" and "Pre" but Apple didn't.

There are other "competitors" coming out from the likes of Meizu, LG, Samsung, Sony, etc. With software from Google and Microsoft to name only two. The comment was quite broad and appropriate because a lot of what's been seen is not simply inspired by the iPhone, but often a plain rip-off. With Meizu going so far as using Apple icons early on. Did anyone else see the iPod rip-off "ePhone" by some other company?

The second "question" was an attempt to goad Apple into commenting on the Pre, but they didn't bite.

Now, the whole theme of IP protection could have been topical due to the comments that Ed Colligan has been making, taking every opportunity to pronounce their product is better than the iPhone while the media has been paying a lot of attention at product comparisons and elements that the Pre might be lifting from the iPhone.

Palm has never had a significant share of a large market. They've been leaders (big fish) in a small market (small pond), but the landscape for this type of product has changed in a big way. I think different people at Apple are paying close attention to everything that's coming out from all players. But to suggest that the top brass at Apple are worried about the Pre specifically is likely as far from the truth as one can get.

The Pre is like a nice shiny new PMP from Creative. The iPhone is like.. The iPod.

I really wonder where your assurance of Palm's implosion is coming from. Palm has been an innovator in the handheld space for years. Yes, they've fallen behind recently, but they fell behind before and got back up. Palm was nearly dead before they bought handspring for one product that was still in development. That one purchase has sustained them for the last five years.

Palm knows how to build a mobile device. They understand usability. They understand battery life. They must understand marketing to be able to sell as many Centros as they have. Palm understands how to support a mobile developer community.

The apparent subtext of palm's "bring 'em on" statements seems obvious. How many patents does Palm own that the iPhone infringes on? How many patents does Google own that the iPhone infringes on? I don't know the answers to these questions, but my bet is "a significant number" and "zero" respectively.

I bought a Palm Pilot. Considering how much I actually needed one, i.e. how much I ended up using it, I'd say they must understand marketing pretty well

Peter

So the Pilot wasn't borne of the Newton from Apple? If Palm thought they stood any chance with a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, for specifics of the iPhone, they would have launched one, or more, in the past 1.5 years.

Elevation Partners saved Palm's ass more recently. They've been on the way out and it's obvious from their results that they don't know how to build a handset people want nor how to market it so that people do. Just look at all the money they've lost quarter after quarter. They've been having their collective asses handed to them by RIM.

The Pre is a nice effort for the consumer space, but it's going to be too little too late. What am I saying, it doesn't matter what it is, Palm would ruin it. Palm's attitude is hubristic to the core as well. Time to pay the piper sooner rather than later.

I bought a Palm Zire72 a few years ago, and it is *still* an indispensible part of my kit. Dunno how much of a part the marketing played in that purchase, but I did buy one in the end.

Cheers

Kudos to Palm for coming out of dormancy with an exciting new product.

I bought a Palm Treo 650 three years ago and I couldn't live a day without it. I will buy a Palm Pre and benefit from it for as many years.

If Palm falls off the map, I'll still have my Pre. When dead iPhone batteries force their owners to upgrade, I will buy a replacement Pre battery and continue uninterrupted. Planned obsolescence is a filthy revenue stream.

The Pre hardware is an iPhone with a time-tested and beloved keyboard. webOS is innovative and could have some serious potential. These elements make it the best iPhone clone out there.

If Apple did it first, but Palm does it better, who is the winner?

With regard to patents:

The decision by a company to engage in a nasty patent fight doesn't happen lightly. Patent cases take years to litigate and the outcome can be quite uncertain, particularly when jury trials come into play. Oh, and these cases easily cost millions of dollars in legal fees.

On the other hand, filing for and getting patents granted is relatively cheap (five figures) and (sadly) easy to do (witness all the examples of bogus patents). The net effect is that these companies tend to pile up large stacks of patents. Does Company X's widget infringe Company Y's patent? You have to litigate to find out. Is Company Y's patent valid, or does the prior art anticipate it or render it obvious? You have to litigate to find out.

Instead, the likely outcome is that there will be a private negotiation. An Apple person on one side with a stack of patents. A Palm person on the other side with another stack of patents. At the end of the day, if both companies are rational, they agree to cross-license the stacks of patents and go back to competing in the marketplace.

Now, are they rational? Very interesting question.

The iPhone doesn't become a brick if the battery dies. Just because the battery isn't user removable doesn't mean it isn't removable. For $20, I can buy a new battery for the very first iPod, released in 2001, without a user removable battery. That same iPod would still attach to my 2008 computer, and work as it did in 2001.

I'll agree planned obsolescence is indeed a dirty revenue stream. But that statement doesn't apply to Apple products.

On re-reading this, it could be taken either way round; what I was trying to say was that I didn't use it at all. Yes, there are lots of people who genuinely need a PDA or smartphone, but it was only Palm's marketing that convinced me that I was one of them.

As another demonstration, not that any is needed, of the power of marketing: I bought some tinned tuna in the supermarket today, for the first time in ages, because I really fancied a tuna sandwich. Only later did it occur to me that I'd recently been re-reading Calvin and Hobbes.

Peter

Unless your 2008 computer is a MacBook, which doesn't have FireWire, which is the only connectivity on the 1G iPods. (I still use my 1G iPod.)

The recent Pre news has been pretty encouraging. The lack of a storage card slot is definitely problematic, but they've committed to allowing phone as modem tethering from day one, and will allow users to install apps from outside of the app store without any kind of circumvention needed. Both of these are things that Apple has gotten wrong IMHO, and though I know there are workarounds, it's refreshing to see a company go a bit more laissez-faire on restricting access to the device's capabilities.

So far they haven't really made a misstep. All they have left to do is let some real hands on reviews out.

I'm sure that has far more to do with the cellular provider than it does with the equipment manufacturer.

Yeah, but the device itself has to support it. It's good news that the device supports it, and good news that Sprint is continuing their policy of being reasonably tether-friendly.

I really like the concept of the App Store being the only source of apps for the iPhone. It's one place to go to and find something, rather then having to search all over the place. Finding apps for my Palm, and my old iPaq was a mess. Even the jailbroken community can't keep things easy, as there are two separate installer apps, and multiple repositories you have to know about to see everything out there.

I can understand the issues though with the App Store policies and restrictions. While some moderation is nice, I think Apple has been a bit heavy handed at times against a few apps, and not allowed entire segments that should probably be allowed. So I suppose to me the concept is good, and the execution has been mostly good, albeit with some concerns.

Palm will still have an App Store, which I imagine will be vetted, but the ability to install whatever you want (without having to pay $99 for a license) is still nice.

What Bitt said. I like the idea that Palm will provide a store, but allow you to get apps elsewhere. Choice is good.

I disagree. I thought choice was always good, but in the case of apps for mobile phones it turns out I was wrong.

With my Windows Mobile phones I rarely installed anything new. That was because I had to:

- go and search out the apps to install
- work out whether it worked with my particular phone/os version
- work out which way to install the particular app
- go through the whole download/install process when there is a new version
- backup my data for the apps so that I could get it back after an os update
- reinstall it all after an os update
- work out how to uninstall all traces of apps I tried but didn't like (sometimes a very painful task)

etc etc

There is loads of stuff in the App store and the App developer have to play by Apple's rules, which makes all this headache go away. If developers had the choice not to use the App store then we would have a similar mess to the Windows Mobile approach.

The end result is that I have a couple of dozen apps on my iPhone, many that I use regularly and many that I paid cash for. In this case lack of choice has been a very good thing.

Does Windows Mobile have an official app store? I really don't know, but I've never heard of one.

If it doesn't, your comparison is misleading, because Palm's app store will (presumably) address the problems you're talking about. Pre owners who are worried about those problems can use the app store and not bother with developers who don't distribute their apps on other sites. And, obviously, developers are going to WANT to get their apps onto the official store to get the widest audience.

I remain unconvinced that the lack of choice is helpful in any way.

Just to rebut (all of) your specific points:

If you want to look only on the Palm Pre App Store, fine.

Well, there's only one Palm Pre model. Shouldn't be a problem. However, I'm sure that if/when there are additional models, the app store will have that information easily available.

This is more of a failing of the OS than any distribution method.

Again, OS problem.

Again, OS problem.

Again, OS problem.

Again, OS problem.

Hopefully the new album does well for U2, because Bono is going to lose a sh*tload of money with one particular Elevation Partners investment. Hint: Palm.

I also think Roger McNamee, one of his partners, has gotten deep into his drug stash. Feeble.

I did love this bit of the interview:

"Palm’s newer operating system will give it an edge, McNamee said. The underlying technology for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry is about 13 years old, while the technology behind the iPhone goes back almost nine years, he said."

Ooooooohkay, so by those standards (picking when an OS with pretty much the same name first shipped) the Pre's linux kernel dates from... uhhh... 1991. 18 years old. And actually, if we leave aside the BSD origins, OSX goes back to 1987ish and NEXTstep - much older than his claim.

It's hard to claim that any unix-based system is a fresh take on OS design... sigh. I mean, if you're gonna make sweeping generalisations, try not to make too much of a fool of yourself unless you have a hairstyle to match.

Ah. He does

Hugo

I'd be surprised if even 10 (total) original iPhone customers bought a Pre. People switching from an iPhone 3G to a Pre, with or without contract is just not likely going to be happening. At least not in numbers large enough to even begin to quantify.

The trash talk is as ridiculous coming from this guy as it would be coming from the president of Meizu. He must think this market is the same as the one Palm took over from Apple in the mid nineties. The difference this time is that the customer base is not made entirely of geeks that look like McNamee. And it's more than 1000 customers globally.

I personally think that Palm will get a decent number of customers; the phone/OS certainly pretty and as long as it's sufficiently robust they will get a following. Lots of people want something different, don't fancy the klunkiness of winmo or symbian and aren't willing to give up totally on industrial design by getting a G1.

In my mind the problem will be whether they have the money to build momentum, provide good service and deal with the inevitable fallout from an all-new hardware platform. It's either going to be a blaze of glory or a blaze of returns and annoyed customers. Given their shortness of money (and hence time), one has to think that they're cutting every corner they can to get the phone on the market before they run out of cash - ready or not.

Still, looking forward to some competition. It's been getting a bit lonely

Hugo

I can agree with you here, but I don't believe a significant portion of those customers will be defecting from an iPhone. And I don't believe "decent" will be 10 million in 12 months either (the "iPhone number").

I think my biggest problem however is the grandstanding. It's really quite pathetic. They're riding on Apple's coat tails (again) while trash talking the company and platform that will be at least partially responsible for any margin of success they gain. For all of Steve Job's grandiose proclamations, there's always some element of humbleness (I'm not a bit SJ fan), especially if they're ever alluding to sales that have yet to happen. Apple definitely know how to work the media when it comes to competition, something Palm, and its largest investor, would do well to learn.

Remembering how Palm got to the low point it's trying to climb out from would be a good place to start.

By this you mean that they're leveraging WebKit in Palm WebOS? WebKit seems to be ubiquitous in these applications (where's the stripped-down Firefox?).

I figure that the Palm Pre, for Sprint, is analogous to the Blackberry for Verizon. Beforehand, they had some random Korean phone and/or WinMo phone. Afterward, they put all their promotional energy into the new Blackberry / iPhone knockoff. I expect no less from Sprint.

What will be interesting is if a Palm Pre "application" can be made to run on Android and/or iPhone.

Well, the demos I've seen are running palm pre apps in Safari on a mac (with some special sauce, I'm sure)...

Hugo

"Loc: Cambridge, UK"?

Yeah, I ought to update my profile. "Loc: Shenzhen, CN" is strictly more accurate at this second...

Sadly, only on Windows Mobile.