Palm: A Day Late And A Dollar Short

[Halo]

With Palm's recent release of the Zire and the approaching release of the Tungsten, these two products will take on the form of Palm's two distinct lines of the handhelds, similar to Handspring's Treo and Visor.
The Zire is a low price ($99) low feature (2MB) solution designed to appeal to a lot of people who don't want or need all the extras; however, it is so low and comes at such a bad time, I wonder if they will even be able to get it off the shelves.

Palm's Tungsten is supposedly nothing more than a beefed up version of some current models.
Palm continues to miss the boat with the market.
Yes, they created the market, but IMHO they have lost touch with where other manufacturers and the consumers have taken it.
Consumers want feature rich devices at low prices. They want MP3 playback they want color displays, they want to be able to download and upload, play games, look at pictures, etc etc it goes on and on. People don't want to have the electronic appliance clutter of carrying an MP3 player, a voice recorder, a laptop, a pager, a cell phone, and the rest. Consumers were tempted away from Day Planners and Paper notes by the capabilities of a PDA. Now that it has become possble to package all these other things into one, why on earth would a consumer want ot saddle themselves with e-baggage.

Sony just bought 6% of Palmsource. I wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to get some control of the OS business, and I wouldn't be surprised it Palm gets absorbs or simply disappears in the coming years.

[Ioman]

I have never been a fan of Palm products or Handspring for that matter. I think that Grafitti writing is terrible and the OS is bad as well. I want something that syncs flawlessly with my home computer and I want a little power. Gimme a 200MHz Strong Arm Processor and an operating system that has some meet to it.

The Palm OS is simply not going to make it if they keep up at this pace. 2mb of memory is a step BACKWARDS, not forwards...

[LinkDJ]

I agree with ioman, the worst palm os products come from palm. When I went from using a Palm 3 to a Sony Clie PEG-T415, and the difference was amazing.

Compare the Clie T415 to the Zire:
The Clie is slim, has 8mb of memory, has a 33MHz DragonBall Processor, and costs less than $150. Oh, and the screen is high resolution and great, and the jog wheel is wonderful for quick scrolling. Memory stick and IR for quick data transfer. Rechargeable Li-Ion battery.

The Zire is bigger, has 2mb of memory, only has a 16MHz processor, and costs $100. Oh, and it has IR too, and a Rechargeable Li-Ion battery.

The Zire dosen't even come with a hotsync cradle, just a cable.

Too little too late indeed.

[Foo Fighter]

I wonder what impact the new upcoming low priced Pocket PC devices will have on Palm and PalmOS licensees like Sony?

Dell is coming out with a $199 device, and HP, Toshiba, and Viewsonic are launching $299 models. For the first time, PalmOS device will be MORE expensive than Pocket PCs. Is anyone going to pay $500 for a Palm Tungsten when they can have a Dell PPC with the same features for $199?

:confused:

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Foo Fighter
I wonder what impact the new upcoming low priced Pocket PC devices will have on Palm and PalmOS licensees like Sony?

Dell is coming out with a $199 device, and HP, Toshiba, and Viewsonic are launching $299 models. For the first time, PalmOS device will be MORE expensive than Pocket PCs. Is anyone going to pay $500 for a Palm Tungsten when they can have a Dell PPC with the same features for $199?

:confused:

Great points and I think your answer is "no". The only people I see NOT buying the new PDA's with Pocket PC installed are those that are used to the Palm OS or not too fond of Microsoft. I think that the new Sharp Zaurus shows that there is not necessarily a strong following to either the Pocket PC or the Palm OS. I do not think that people associate with PDA's the way they do with desktops. With desktop computers, the OS defines the system in a sense. With PDA's that just isn't so. People look for features, not familiarity.

I think that Palm needs to change their business model without a doubt in order to be competitive. They should start by developing a more powerful system. If Motorola can't make a CPU powerful enough, move to IBM or Strong. And if you can't compete with a marketing machine like Microsoft, develop for a niche like Sharp or Blackberry has.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Foo Fighter
I wonder what impact the new upcoming low priced Pocket PC devices will have on Palm and PalmOS licensees like Sony?

Dell is coming out with a $199 device, and HP, Toshiba, and Viewsonic are launching $299 models. For the first time, PalmOS device will be MORE expensive than Pocket PCs. Is anyone going to pay $500 for a Palm Tungsten when they can have a Dell PPC with the same features for $199?

:confused:

At Comdex this year, Dell handed out 200 of their new PDA's to the first 200 journalists that entered their press conference. Palm, may need to get out of the hardware market if it is not making enough money for them. As far as Handspring is concerned, they might be in deeper trouble.

[llbbl]

Man u guys a bunch of Palm hatters. Can I join your club?? LOL

From when I have used the grafitti it wasn't that hard. You just have to get used to it. I have seen some Palm users make notes a heck of a lot faster than CE or WTF'ing M$ BS Mobile OS that they have now.

It would REALLY suck ballz if sony bought palm. Then I just might have to start supporting M$ . :( ahhhh Plz don't get bought out, Plz don't get bought out...

I do agree that 2MB for $99 is pretty lame. I thought RAM was chaper these days.

I would rather buy a Handspring over a Palm. Maybe an older one cause I don't care about color.

Can you IM using a Palm ?? Isn't mobile service for your PDA like $30-50 / month. Always on Email like Blackberry is mega sweet.

Maybe I would rather buy a GBA and a snazzy phone. Prolly all I want to buy a Palm for is cause they are / were cool.

I c you guys support Closed Source M$ rather than Open Source Palm...

[Archon]

I would rather buy a Sony (hides from disco), Palm OS, but none of the stickiness that surrounds Palm or Handspring... I myself like the Clie SJ30, its Palm 4.1, but is still pretty sharp... I could care less if it has an mp3 player, etc... I use Minidiscs ;)

Wish Sony would release a similar PDA running OS5, the NX60/70v are nice, but I dont need all those features.

As for the Dells, those Axiums are nice, going to change the Pocket PC world for the better (price wise), but they are massive! why not just carry a brick around with you, it would be lighter. The new cheap Pocket PCs sacrifice some, you're not getting the blazing speed you would expect, plus useable memory drops down to about 47mb (from their uber small ROM)

And yes, I would pay more for a PalmOS driven PDA. Remember the software split? 70% / 30% in Palm's favor.

Dont even get me started about Sharp's PDA, that thing is a joke (no offense), that operating system is useless, why not just go buy an organizer from Walmart, you'll get the same use from it.

[llbbl]

The Dell's are nice. I got my eye on them, but I'm not sure I am going to get one. It is quite possible if I am going to be on the road for weeks at a time. I need a way to connect. Hmmm DT on a PocketPC ...

[Archon]

ew! a pocket PC user ;)