Palm Pre Bashing: Continued…
| by PalmWebOS.org on June 3rd, 2009 |
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When the Palm Pre and WebOS were first announced you heard nothing but absolute raving about how awesome the device would be, how revolutionary the platform was, how Palm needed a homerun and hit a Grand Slam. Looking back, it seems the honeymoon is over. But rather than settling into a deeply boring marriage, analysts are already predicting divorce.
Last week we saw tech enthusiasts claiming the Palm Pre Will Fail and today, we hear from more Debbie Downers.
Before I point them out, I should admit to a few things:
- Running this website, I DO have a vested interest in the success of the Palm Pre and WebOS.
- I want to see the Palm Pre and WebOS succeed
- I’m optimistic – the glass is half full – obligation and vested interests aside.
The folks saying the Palm Pre will fail have vested interests of a different type. Many of them – like John Biggs at CrunchGear – actually WANT the Palm Pre to succeed just, unfortunately, don’t think it will.
Then you’ve got William Hurley at BusinessWeek who writes:
For consumers, there’s likely to be disappointment with price. The Pre starts at $199, after rebates and a service plan—almost exactly what the iPhone costs through AT&T (T). If you can afford to spend $199 on a phone in this economy, would you purchase a phone that’s been in the marketplace for two years, has sold more units than the Motorola (MOT) Razr, and is supported by tens of thousands of available applications, or would you purchase an unproven phone from a company teetering on the brink of extinction, or at least irrelevance?
I respect that. And I respectfully disagree.
I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again – the Palm Pre is not about world mobile phone domination with a supreme device that is the end-all-be-all culminating in mobile nirvana. The Palm Pre is a great first foot in the door for WebOS, a promising platform that, when all is said and done, will become on of the top 4 or 5 global mobile phone platforms at worst.
1. dartrax wrote on June 3, 2009
So you are saying: The Palm Pre may not be successfull, but Web OS will. So you are in fact not disagreeing, are you?
2. angrypablo wrote on June 3, 2009
The whole point of the pre is to bring this new platform into center stage for all to see…. so yes his disagreement is real, and in that respect the pre will be a great success.
3. PalmWebOS.org wrote on June 3, 2009
The Palm Pre WILL be successful. People are expecting it to be the #1 phone on the market – it won’t be. But it will be one of the Top 5 phones EASILY which is, no matter how you look at it, a raving success.
The future of WebOS and Palm has to start somewhere and the Palm Pre is a tremendous start.
4. mtm wrote on June 4, 2009
don’t forget it will eventually be available both in CDMA & GSM which covers a wide spectrum of the market
5. Eric Rosen wrote on June 11, 2009
All I can say is this…….
I waited for 3 months, patiently, mind you, for the Pre to come out.
I raced to the store, anxious to see what Palm had turned out, and after much anticipation, I came to the following conclusion:
Palm’s marketing and branding department far exceeds their new product development dept.
This is as true for their design engineers as their software developers.
Not only is the Pre akin to holding dull knives in your hand when its flipped open, the OS is slow to respond, not intuitive, and harder to maneuver through than my treo 700p.
I am the first to say that I wish all of the above wasn’t true.
I wish Palm had designed their phone to be more like a Hummer than a Fischer Price Toy.
I wish they had underpromised and overdelivered.
However, they did not.
I was one of the ranting and raving fans, completely bought into their marketing campaign, and after playing with the phone for 30 seconds, 30 minutes, and then even going back to a different Sprint store again, just to give the benefit of the doubt that I had sampled a faulty demo, I only have one thing to say:
THe Pre may be in the Top 5 phones right now, b/c no other OS can touch what its capable of doing, but you can’t maintain market leadership simply by default.
Apple is going to cream the Pre, as is the next gen version of the Android.
The Pre has no video, no flash capabilities (i mean software, not cameraspeak), and feels like a toy in your hand. No amount of software upgrades can alter its design specs.
I switched from PC to Apple a few years ago, and with much resistance…….Given the vast differential between the PC blue screen of death and lovely Apple experience over the last 2 years, I can only imagine that, after the touch-screen texting-learning curve, I will be as in love with my Iphone as I am with my Macbook Pro.
CDMA, GSM, its all wonderful, but without a solid design and dynamite OS, networks don’t matter at all.
Better to have a slightly slower network and a phone that rocks, than a lightning fast network with a phone that was more hype than excellence, and more sizzle than steak.