Re:Palm CEO’s Letter to Employees
by vishaldpatel on Friday February 26, 2010 @02:14AM
(#1152650)
I thought the ad campaign was pretty good. What I didn't get was why it was taking forever to get the developer network going ... the iPhone with its developer program and the iTunes apps store was already out there. Palm should've had that in the bag before launch.
The simple version is that they screwed up. Palm management thought that they had a full year after launch to roll out their developer program. They obviously miscalculated the importance of having a functional app store from the get-go.
To their credit, they ramped up pretty fast. Last September, they hired Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer (the Bespin guys) to run developer relations. Ben and Dion immediately restructured the developer program, and Palm had their big developer program rollout in December/January, six months after launch.
As of today, the 'App Catalog' is tiny but growing at a pretty good clip. They're at over 1500 apps right now, and are growing at around 20% a month. If they can survive another year, they should be up to Blackberry levels.
Having said that, I've got a friend who got a pre, and he ended up giving his iPhone to his girlfriend and can't stop raving about the pre.
They aren't out of this yet, but I think there challenge will be in communicating and educating an audience about their products.
I don't know that the carriers are the best channel to rely on for marketing of the devices. The carrier will offer incentives, and push devices that are giving the carrier or reps the best business value.
I think palm needs to get customers coming into the store asking for the palm products.
This challenge is further hampered with the number of android, blackberry and soon to be winPhone7 devices.
The stores can have a wall of android, a kiosk of blackberry, and I suspect will have a section dedicated to winPhone7. With only two devices that are visually differentiated, they don't have either the recognizable presence of an iPhone, or the diversity of other platforms.
I think Palm is a good acquisition target for RIM(blackberry). They've done a great job with the OS (one area where palm has really faltered). Both companies have a history in the corporate world, and I think the palm experience could make a good dent in the consumer market, if they had the right partners, and at this point, enough runway.