Gameboy70
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
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foo fighter wrote
It must be released by the end of Q3 or there won't be much left of the "Palm economy" in 2003. The problem for Palm and Handspring, to some extent, is that consumers no longer find these devices compelling. No new features are ever added to the products, so there is little reason to "upgrade". This is why every grayscale PDA introduced over the last 6 months has seen deep consecutive price slashes. People don't want these things anymore. Consumers see grayscale as a low-end feature, and are unwilling to pay up to $299 for such a device.That is the new reality of a changing PDA market. What do you think the current owners of Palm III, Palm V, Visor Dlx, Visor Platinum, Visor Whatever, want to upgrade to next? other monochrome display with a little more RAM? No way...they want COLOR.
The Palm Vx was the top selling PDA of the Christmas season -- not the Cli�, not the iPaq, not the Prism. Only the Cli� is truly competitive, not just because it has color, higher resolution and MP3, but because it's small, good looking, and uses the Palm OS that still dominates the PDA market.
The price slashes have nothing to do with some imagined lack of consumer demand. The freefall dynamics should be familiar to anyone whose seen price wars in other domains, like air fares. Unlike services, whose prices can be reset at any time, discounts on goods have a reverse-ratchet effect. When the VDX was introduced at $250, that became the new price ceiling for general purpose consumer PDAs; a year later, the m100 lowered it by another $100; and so on. The margins are thinning, and that remains true on high-end models: even if the MSRP is higher, the production costs are commensurate. Consumers do benefit from more features, however frivolous, but from a business standpoint the costs incurred in research, development and production make it untenable in the long run for any company less solvent and less diversified than Sony.
Hawkins' characteristically lateral thinking is a vital step back from the cul-de-sac of high-yield, low-margin devices. Handspring is in no position economically to compete with the likes of Sony, Compaq and Microsoft. It's time to do something different: hence the Treo.
True, but I attribute much of Palm's lack of innovation and development to a constant brain drain from the revolving door of CEOs. How many CEOs have we gone through now...5? 6? Every time a bell rings, a former Palm CEO gets his wings.
Fair enough. I've read enough interviews with Palm veterans to know what a sausage factory the company is. I don't have the appetite to go there at the moment.
Palm and Handspring need to begin pushing more color and "gimmicky" devices down the pipe. What will be the next big thing to goose sales? Sony has already figured out that formula...higher resolution color displays...new features such as multimedia, and wireless connectivity. All while offering these new features in a small comfortable form factor.
Sales aren't the problem, revenue is; and every gimmick (1) raises the production cost, (2) lowers profit margins and (3) lowers revenue. If cash in doesn't exceed cash out, the popularity of your product or service is irrelevant. Amazon has been the biggest bookseller on the web for years. Amazon has also been unprofitable for years. Palm finds itself in the same position.
Sony has the cash to recover from a poor-selling model like the first Cli� (Rant: would Sony and other companies please adopt Handpring's tradition of naming rather than numbering models. Which PEG was the first Cli�? I certainly can't remember) and still release an agressive run of massively improved models in only one year, but most companies are capital constrained.
They MUST get this OS out the door, and it MUST be a winner. If it just ends up being an OS 4 look-alike, they are going to be crushed by the media and analysts. Palm can't keep eaking out this lame OS forever. Judging from the poor overall sales of PDAs right now, it may already be running its course.
Notice that the poor sales of PDAs right now is across the board, not particular to Palm OS devices. Psion threw in the towel, and its handhelds had a much more robust OS that Palm's (I consider EPOC/Symbian "the Good WinCE").
I sincerely hope you are wrong. I think releasing a stopgap OS would actually hurt Palm's credibility. Many will see this as evidence that Palm's next generation OS is vaporware.
Lack of credibility would sure be unprecedented in this industry! Once upon a time, Mac was dead. At any rate, Palm's next generation OS is vaporware now.
It may not make or brake Handspring, but it certainly won't be doing them any favors either. Palm on the other hand has it's image to protect. In the eyes of many, they are no longer the leader in the PDA space.
Palm needs to find away to sell products at a profit far more than it needs to worry about what the likes of Jeff Kirvin and PPCBuzz think. The writing is on the wall: "Watch out for falling margins." Adding more RAM, more expensive display technology, audio and other desirable features doesn't solve Palm's problems. I believe Hawkins, on the other hand, has just thought his way out of the box.
Year-old OS? The PalmOS is much older than that. Try 5-6 year-old OS.
Hmmm. That's almost as old as WinCE! Anyway, as you're probably aware, I was referring to the version.
I agree, but there are competitors to the Treo already on the market that haven't really taken off yet. Samsung's i300, Kyocera's smartphone. Only the Blackberry seems to have made some inroads.
I don't consider Samsung's and Kyocera's offerings to be competitors, but cell phones for PDA enthusiasts; the Treo is a PDA for cell phone enthusiasts -- and there are a lot more of them in the world. Integrating the Blackberry's QUERTY keyboard with a phone makes all the difference, not to mention the fact that the Treo is smaller, good looking, and uses the Palm OS that still dominates the PDA market. The former phones are the Newtons of hybid communicators; the Treo is the Pilot. The Blackberry for all its coolness is, well, not a phone.
If [Palm] hadn't licensed out the OS, we would all be using WinCE devices by now..*shudder*. And you can bet prices on Palm devices would never have fallen as low as they are now. So yes, licensing the OS was a bad move for Palm inc, but a wonderful move for the Palm platform.
WinCE device were and are too expensive for casual (most) users. The reason the prices fell had nothing to do with Microsoft: it was the downward spiral of the Palm/Handspring price war. Regardless of who the players were, it was bound to happen anyway, hence Hawkins' shrewd remark, "HP still sells calculators." The asymptotic curve towards Free has plagued every manufacturer and every consumer of every computing platform in history, even Apple. So yes, licensing is a wonderful move for the Palm platform for everyone except Palm.
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Eye of Gameboy
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12-31-2001 03:56 PM
If they came out w/ what you say, I would be happy. It would be nice to have OS5 and ARM7 but good things come to those who wait. BTW, how is that, umm, m505 
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