Fortune: Palm fights back (against Apple)

[Gekko]

Rubinstein started, in his words, "hanging out" with Palm people in late June. He didn't like what he saw. The hardware for the Pre needed to be scrapped and rebooted. For one thing, prototypes were using old "resistive" touchscreen technology that responds to a user physically pushing the screen, not the newer "capacitive" technology manipulated by the electricity in the user's body. Rubinstein tossed out the old phone's hardware and built a new one in about 15 months. "We were basically running a marathon and doing a heart transplant in the middle of it," says Rubinstein.

Palm says its Pre smartphone is an Apple iPhone killer - May. 26, 2009

Palm Pre launch plans leaked - Apple 2.0

[kilofoxtrot]

Great article Gek! Thanks for the link.

Back in the day I was a huge Pilot fan. I hope that Palm can climb back up to some of its former status in the smartphone world. Competition is good no matter what smartphone you use.

I do wonder if Palm is kicking itself over giving up on the Folio too soon now that the netbook market is taking off. I suppose they didnt realize they were ahead of the game. I would not be surprised to see a webOS netbook next year if not sooner.

[cardfan]

I understand they try to get hits and all but the headline is misleading. Palm has never said the Pre is an iphone killer. Palm is pushing its pda features plus multitasking. Media or ipod like features are hardly mentioned.

[Young HoV 718]

Rubinstein saved palm , theres no doubt about it. palm would have been dead by today.

[B-model]

just finished - good article. The back story Elevation was a good add.

[Dieter Bohn]

Resistive. Touch. Screen. O. M. G.

http://www.precentral.net/pre-origin...e-touch-screen

[Q]

Originally Posted by cardfan

I understand they try to get hits and all but the headline is misleading. Palm has never said the Pre is an iphone killer. Palm is pushing its pda features plus multitasking. Media or ipod like features are hardly mentioned.

You're right--it's the media pundits who've dubbed the Pre a potential iPhone killer. Palm and Elevation have said that they're (accurately, IMO) forecasting for both Apple and RIM to maintain strong shares of the smartphone market, and striving for Palm to claim a share along with them. The media hype around an "iPhone killer" is from the same types of sources that dubbed the iPhone the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Here's a point I've seen in various articles (as cited here by an analyst on page 2 of this article from MarketWatch), emphasis mine:

"Palm is in an interesting position. They don't have a lot of resources to work with, and not a lot of cushion," he said. "But if I look at the industry as a whole, Palm has the most valuable asset - an operating system that could compete with the iPhone."

Who else has that competitve OS? <pause... crickets chirping in background> Ok, maybe Android, if Google et al can get it farther along quickly. RIM and Microsoft have major catching up to do, and Nokia has to step up its North American game big-time.

Ok, back to the Fortune article...

Palm, however, wouldn't make a review copy of the phone available to Fortune - typically a sign that not all glitches have been worked out.

I have to wonder when Fortune asked. I'd think Palm would want reviews to air right around launch time, and it could be that Fortune asked too early. (Is this specifically an online article, or is it both in the print mag and online? If the latter, when did it have to be submitted and printed?)

Still, let's hope that Palm has learned from the backlash to their "you can't touch it" policy at tradeshows this year.