Pre Puts Palm Back in the Game – But it’s No Game Changer

Posted on January 8th, 2009 Posted by Kent Pribbernow

Palm at last shows its hand, and it’s not holding a royal flush. There can be no doubt that today’s announcement FINALLY puts them back in the game and on the map, but based on what I’m seeing WebOS is simply Palm’s take on the iPhone – even utilizing the same browser. And I see lots of red flags that spell trouble for Palm, starting with software .

First – It’s a closed platform. Meaning you can say goodbye to any hope of seeing the same lavish apps that exist in the iPhone and Android ecosystems. Instead, WebOS relies on AJAX code enabling wed developers to build what amounts to Dashboard Widgets. Nice, but not NEARLY enough. I enjoy widgets as much as the next Mac user, but native applications they ain’t! You can only do so much under that type of limited framework before you hit a virtual brick wall and the wheels begin falling off.

Second – and this one’s a Duezie – Unless I missed a statement to the contrary WebOS apparently WON’T run Garnet era apps. That has little impact on me for I ditched this platform long ago, but the impact it will have on Palm users is staggering. Palm just pulled the rug out from under your platform, and its replacement will be every bit as alien to its users as that of competing platforms. This is NOT PalmOS, nor its successor. Unlike Apple who weened its userbase and developers off of the legacy MacOS to a new advanced platform (OSX), Palm is simply leaving everything behind. While that may be a great thing in the longrun, and in the fact the right move for Palm given the circumstances, the fact remains that WebOS is not the next version of PalmOS – just as Pre is NOT AN UPGRADE PATH for Centro and Treo users. You may just as well toss your current Palm in the trash and delete all those quaint little apps you’ve relied on over the years (and invested money in) by moving to another platform.

Third – There’s the handset. It’s nice, but not very inspiring. I’m willing to overlook that part – hell, it looks a lot nicer than the G1, I’ll give it that. But it’s not something that turn heads or lure people away from their current smartphone. Still, that’s a minor quibble for now. The real problem is that Palm chose to lock the phone away in Sprint’s walled garden. Choosing a CDMA network for the introduction of this ALL IMPORTANT new phone and platform was a bad move – an automatic loss in sales that would have come from a much larger GSM market with more carriers and an ever thriving market for unlocked SKUs.

So there you have it. I’m thrilled to see Palm once again back in the game, but WebOS doesn’t return them to a leadership position and it’s lacking in real innovation. It slowly closes the gap with Apple and Google, but not enough.

Tags: Palm, WebOS