Palm Archive

HP has announced that they will acquire Palm for $1.2 billion. Palm’s current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company.

It’s so interesting to me to watch how Palm went from “iPhone killer” to basically dead in the water in just about a year. Back in October, I suggested that Palm would have been better off focusing on non-valley mobile developers instead of caring only about the valley. Who knows now if they would have taken that suggestion if they would have gained more platform awareness and more consumer interest.

I hope that we will all do a deep dive into why Palm wasn’t able to grab the market share that it seemed everyone thought they would when the Palm Pre launched.

Under the terms of the deal, H-P will pay $5.70 per Palm share, a 23 percent to Wednesday’s closing price of $4.63. The NYT notes that shares in Palm have fallen 52 percent over the past 12 months.

Read more on the NYT and Paid Content.

I currently own a Samsung Ace mobile phone which runs Windows Mobile and is on the Sprint network. I love the phone – it does everything I need a mobile to do. Sure it doesn’t have a huge screen and it hasn’t helped me pick up any women like the iPhone apparently does, but it works great. I use the awesome Skyfire mobile browser for the web and unlike many, I don’t use Twitter or Facebook on my phone.

My contract with Sprint is coming to an end soon and I am considering what my next mobile device might be. I haven’t had much time to read any reviews of the latest devices. I do see a ton of advertising on television for three specific devices: Palm Pre (Sprint), Droid (Verizon), and the MyTouch3G (T-Mobile).  I’d like to share my thoughts about what I’ve learned about the three devices solely based on the television advertising. I have never used any of these devices.
Continue reading “Commercial Smackdown: Pre vs. Droid vs. MyTouch3G” »

Earlier this year I wrote several times about the mistake that I believed Yahoo was making with regards to wanting to get the developers on board with their apps and programs. It seemed (and continues to seem) that Yahoo wants to win over the valley developers when they are so locked to Google and Apple that it is near impossible for the “big win” that Yahoo is seeking. My take is that Yahoo should go after other developer markets and then come back to the Valley with the world’s developers behind them (that is if they would even care about the valley at that point). Yahoo is bringing their OpenHack event to NYC this week and as I mentioned to the team responsible for the event, they should work to own the other major startup centers around the world.

Let’s move forward to October 2009. I see that Palm is making exactly the same mistake that Yahoo has. Palm held an event earlier this week in San Francisco to discuss the state of the hardware, the platform, etc. There were also several major announcements at the event including the ability for users to install applications without using a store and some open source changes. You can read more about the announcements on GigaOM and SFGate.

Palm also provided a free Palm Pre mobile device to everyone that was in the audience. The Pre came with a free month of service so look for a flood of Pre devices on eBay in about 40 days.

The issue for Palm is about winning over developers and getting startups to want to develop on their platform. Just like Yahoo, Palm could work to “own” the developer communities around the world…instead they decide to try to woo the developer’s who would do anything to touch Steve Jobs. The “Apple Magnet” is very tight in the valley but isn’t as strong as you move further away from 94103. My take is that Palm should have announced these features (and all future releases) in different cities. Palm executives could easily attend the local Meet the local mobile developers and startups – get them excited about the Palm Pre and WebOS platform.

Continue reading “Palm Cares About Developers…Valley Developers” »