Engadget lectures Palm

Posted
by
Simon Sage
on August 21, 2007, at 2:36 PM
in News
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Comments: 8 responses
8 Comments

PalmWe all know that Palm’s not doing so hot, but the Engadget crew has laid out all of Palm’s problems and what they need to do to get back in the game. It might not be BlackBerry-related, but the open letter is a really concise way of identifying what customers’ baseline expectations are for smartphones these days, and there are more than a few things on the list that RIM’s managing to do that Palm isn’t. Don’t mess with the keyboard, make your handheld look nice, add Wi-Fi, support multitasking, embrace developers, cultivate multimedia, get with Google, and make better ads all seem like things that RIM is doing, but there’s also a couple things that BlackBerry could take a hint from. Do you guys think there’s anything RIM could learn from Palm’s mistakes?

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  • http://www.5o9inc.com/ Peter Cranstone

    Wow… they sum things up nicely. Palm is almost out of the race. Soon there will be three, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux (the other two will be niche players (Apple & Blackberry. It’s tough to unseat them in the Enterprise because of the executive culture around the device).

    The real key here is the developers… Nokia is moving to Linux, Motorola is there, which leaves Microsoft (huge base). Apple is obviously closed and Blackberry doesn’t make it easy (all the new security stuff is poorly documented plus they are charging for access to API’s…)

    Lose the development community at your peril. JavaScript only goes so far. The key is to get on the device and then let the server (web service) do the heavy lifting.

    The smart developers of course will come up with something that runs on all of them and improves the customers experience when interacting with Web services.

    Cheers,

    Peter

  • http://www.5o9inc.com Peter Cranstone

    Wow… they sum things up nicely. Palm is almost out of the race. Soon there will be three, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux (the other two will be niche players (Apple & Blackberry. It’s tough to unseat them in the Enterprise because of the executive culture around the device).

    The real key here is the developers… Nokia is moving to Linux, Motorola is there, which leaves Microsoft (huge base). Apple is obviously closed and Blackberry doesn’t make it easy (all the new security stuff is poorly documented plus they are charging for access to API’s…)

    Lose the development community at your peril. JavaScript only goes so far. The key is to get on the device and then let the server (web service) do the heavy lifting.

    The smart developers of course will come up with something that runs on all of them and improves the customers experience when interacting with Web services.

    Cheers,

    Peter

  • http://www.dragonhunting.com/ James

    I hope RIM took a good look at that list too.

    There’s a bunch of things on there that applies to everyone, especially in regards to being open about updates and such. I would like to see a better thought out way of doing software updates instead of having to look for the latest software release on a web forum.

    Also Mac support. That’s huge. The mac market continues to grow at record pace, and not all mac users want to use the iPhone.

  • http://www.dragonhunting.com James

    I hope RIM took a good look at that list too.

    There’s a bunch of things on there that applies to everyone, especially in regards to being open about updates and such. I would like to see a better thought out way of doing software updates instead of having to look for the latest software release on a web forum.

    Also Mac support. That’s huge. The mac market continues to grow at record pace, and not all mac users want to use the iPhone.

  • CRuss

    Looks like palm is listening. Has RIM ever responded to an Open letter?

    http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/23/palms-ed-colligan-responds-to-our-open-letter/

  • CRuss

    Looks like palm is listening. Has RIM ever responded to an Open letter?

    http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/23/palms-ed-colligan-responds-to-our-open-letter/

  • http://www.blackberrycool.com/ BlackBerry Cool Simon

    I don’t know if anyone’s ever written a serious open letter to RIM, CRuss. Even if we did, you’re right that they probably wouldn’t reply (though they’d likely listen and discuss internally). Is there anything not in Palm’s letter that should be in RIM’s?

  • http://www.blackberrycool.com BlackBerry Cool Simon

    I don’t know if anyone’s ever written a serious open letter to RIM, CRuss. Even if we did, you’re right that they probably wouldn’t reply (though they’d likely listen and discuss internally). Is there anything not in Palm’s letter that should be in RIM’s?