Great OS, but it came to market too late. Not to mention WebOS was half broken when it was released. It STILL does not have voice recording capabilities, which eliminates a ton of app-potential. I love it...but it is too little, too late, Palm.
I don't think it came to the market too late. It had a lot of potential to be a solid #3 competitor in the mobile space behind Android and iPhone. I think their main problem was their crappy hardware they put the OS on.
I'd say it came to the market too late to not have huge marketing behind it. I bet we'll see Windows Phone 7 which is far later do much better (at least in terms of market share/units shipped). Yeah, crappy hardware hurt badly, too.
But it did have tremendous marketing behind it. I saw those very creepy Palm commercials all over the place. Hell we had a huge Palm banner hanging in Downtown Denver for like 6 months.
I think Palm suffered from a serious issue with brand identity. It just seemed like people weren't sure what those phones were supposed to be exactly. Were they blackberry competitors? After all, they had a really crappy keyboard. iPhone competitors? The form factor would suggest otherwise.
True, good point. I amend my earlier statement to be "huge good marketing".
Also, I assume that Windows phones will be on (nearly) all carriers, whereas Palm was (and is?) stuck on Sprint in the US. That's worked out OK — though we'll never know how much better it could have possibly gone — for Apple, but for various reasons, including lateness to market with a broadly desirable smartphone, I don't think that's been as feasible for Palm.
Are you sure the past tense is appropriate? HP just spent a bit over a billion dollars to buy webOS; I'd be shocked if we don't see a major push next winter at the latest.
I don't think he is. According to comScore Palm managed to not lose market share in the last three months while Microsoft, Apple, and RIM lost a collective 5% to Google. In the long run and with HP now behind it I think that webOS certainly has the potential to become #3.
RIM has most of it's market in enterprise's and that certainly won't be easy to crack so in the short run I expect that RIM will remain top of the heap. But in the 5+ year horizon HP certainly has the relationships with enterprises through it's server sales to get their foot in the door and start shifting that mindset.
Apple will always have it's core (pun intended) of ardent supporters, but most of them already have the iPhone. The fact that they lost market share in the second quarter demonstrates that.
Android has such a diverse set of hardware vendors using it that it is destined to eventually take the top of the market.
In the short term 2-4 year horizon I don't see anything really changing except Android continuing to inch it's way up the ladder. In the long term iff HP/Palm manages to get some great hardware out it could move up as well but they really need to execute to make it happen.
*disclaimer: I have carried a Palm branded product since the Palm Personal (1995 IIRC) and currently carry a Palm T|X and a dumb phone. My preceding comments might be colored by my loyalty to the brand but I still haven't jumped to the Palm Pre yet.
I also see this as being a three horse race. Android will eventually end up in the #1 position. Apple #2. With RIM, webOS, MeeGo and Win Mobile 7 vying for the third position.
Even now Blackberry Enterprise Server installs are falling. It won't be a single player that take RIM down, it will be the all the majors have good enough exchange and security support.
I liked what I have seen so far of MeeGo but I am afraid it will only been seen as a less popular alternative to Android and will have the low market share to match.
Until the changing of the guard, I just don't any new successes out of Microsoft. Besides it will be the next version of Windows Mobile that gets all the effort. There is a MS cycle enter market with a product better than all their competitors and capture a large market share, stagnate, half-hearted release, start picking things up, and release something good again. E.g. IE6 was better than everything else at the time, IE 7 was lipstick on a pig, IE 8 was basically a rewrite to have a better foundation, and IE9 might actually be good. This pretty much mirrows Windows Mobile 4 - 7. I see Windows Mobile 7 at the IE 8 level.
Palm was some really interesting stuff and with the money of HP behind them I really don't see why they couldn't be number 3.
It's timing to market was just fine. But two issues killed it, IMO:
1) The SDK took way too long to come out. I was ready to do some dev work on it. But by the time it came out, I had passed on it. SDKs must be ready at device launch, and the app store must ship with the device.
2) The advertising was horrible. The Pre should have been a huge seller with Sprint customers, but many didn't even know about it.
I think it would be better to say it was incomplete. What shipped worked quite well and did what it was supposed to do, but there was a lot more functionality that should have been there (voice dial for example). As meowzero says, their real problem was the quality of the hardware, it is probably the most fragile phone on the market.
