Originally Posted by PapaNoHair
I was wondering the other day: what if Palm has (quietly) changed their target audience and is simply trying to sell to Mom and Pop Average and not the geeks in us? If Mom and Pop Average only wants a phone that is fun to use, keep tracks of their calendar events, contacts, allows them access social networking sites, text, etc, etc then number-wise Palm just might succeed. I see the Pre is slowly climbing the ranks (in a bad economy) so who knows: perhaps they really do know what they are doing. Perhaps we who are previous Palm users are not the target audience - at least at this time.
I think you make a good point. Who are they marketing to and who is buying it?
I saw it mentioned in a comment somewhere that all this homebrew, patch stuff might be alienating customers. The first thing people hear is, "Oh you just got a Pre, you need to root it, install Preware, followed by homebrew apps". If you're aiming for bigtime market share, that's not the audience that's going to get you there. But are they the bulk of current owners? Power users, tweakers, etc.
I think there is another audience that is using and loving the Pre. Articles like the one above don't consider the mainstream consumer. I do think he makes some very fair and valid points. I don't think we're on the ledge just yet and that's the sense I got when reading it.