What does Palm have to do... to stay in business. Alright guys, just a general question, but I am cursious as to what direction you think Palm needs to take in order to stay in business and gain market share. Any and all responses welcome. Is their problem hardware related, OS related, Sprint related, marketing...what are your thoughts? As most of you know, I'm not a big Palm Pre fan, but that doesn't mean I want Palm to go under...competition is a great thing. Who knows, maybe Palm will take a peak in here and see some great ideas from people on the street. SOUND OFF!
I'll give you my short list. Figure out a way to clear out current inventory. Unless they move the existing phones, they cannot release a new phone. I'm not a developer, but there has to be a reason why they haven't garnered more developer interest. Why isn't there Kinoma or Docs To Go for webOS? Instead of releasing multiple devices, build one great device and secure deals with multiple carriers. I think one of the problems is the existing devices are too similar. It's hard enough to sell one phone and have it be successful. Hardware build needs to be improved. Speed up webOS. Again, I'm not a developer, but it feels slow compared to Android, iPhone. Elegant, yes...but slow. Finally, I think they need to do a better job of outreach to communities like this one.
Hardware hardware hardware...somewhere along the way it became popular to make phones lightweight. I'm sure there are those out there that like their phones light, but I think "generally" speaking, phones with a little weight to them (ie nexus one, iphone, droid) are becoming more and more popular. People equate weight with quality for the most part. Screen size is another huge factor these days. Look at the HD2, Nexus One, Supersonic...this is the future like it or not. Lastly, I think they need to incorporate a virtual keyboard...even if they have a hardware keyboard, I think the virtual keyboard is another feature that really has to be included on smartphones of today. in sum: 1. General Hardware improvements (ie slider, adding weight) 2. screen size 3. virtual keyboard
While it would be great to see new hardware, there is no way they can even announce new hardware. If sales of existing webOS devices are slow, can you imagine if those interested parties were waiting for the next phone. For argument's sake, say they were to demonstrate a slab device --- think Nexus One -- with an on-screen keyboard and even more refined than N1. The general consensus is that people would love to see Palm produce a webOS phone in that form factor. What happens to the 1.1 million phones that haven't been sold. Not to mention, what carrier is going to take the phone? Possibly Sprint, but they've gone down that road before. Verizon is the best carrier, but who knows where they are in inventory. The Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are only a few months old. If you were to start with one goal for Palm -- it would be to sell the phones that are sitting in inventory by any means necessary. That makes Verizon, Sprint happy. It also means more webOS users -- which hopefully translates to more interest in the App Catalog. That's critical as dev's have to be concerned about investing in the webOS platform. Do all of this and somehow stop the public relations bleeding. It's bad out there. I mean real bad. If you do any phone research, you'd likely decide against purchasing a Palm webOS phone.
I agree with all the above. Here my two cents: -Inverntory - at this point VZW is selling the Pre for $79 with a 2yr contract in some areas. Sprint needs to do this as well, but also get a GSM Pre running on AT&T or T-mobile - Focus Base: they have to single out men. Honestly not to be sexest, be we do buy majority of the electronic devices on the market. If they have to start giving the Pre away for free or trying to get in the hands or more celebs, they need to do it. Marketing sucks. Why the hell are they focsuing on women? - Hardware: NEEDS TO BE #1! They need to start getting other big phone manufactures making WebOS devices, namely HTC, Samsung, and LG. HTC could make a great UI for WebOS. While Palm is working on a killer phone in house. -WebOS 2.0 : NEEDS TO BE 2nd! I say take all the patchs included on Preware and incoperate them. Finsh polishing the OS and and give it a major speed boost.
I think they just need to advertise better ... At least once a week I get someone saying to me ' that's a cool phone, what is that a droid/blackberry?' Most people don't even know what a Palm Pre is!
Product, Price, Place and Promotion have to go together , simultaneously, otherwise any company will fail. And it means everything: Product: Software and Hardware, working as tweens efficient sticked.Fix all the bugs once for all of webos 1.4 and give us a better hardware. Price: affordable for the wideworld masses. Place: Many carriers at the same time in any country. Try to avoid exclusivities. Promotion: Own and Carriers Sales team enough trained. Just now are starting to support sales carriers teams in the place. It has to be made from the very begining. Advertise more like Palm is doing with the last ad, just show a little more the phone. More Sales information and training points for the public in the most populated cities around the world. I will use even flyers to give away to the people on the bus and train stations with info about the advantages of webos compared with others.
Much of what has been written on various tech blogs is a blueprint for future products. Without sales of the current inventory, they cannot move forward. My concern is that Palm felt the Pre Plus was a sufficient upgrade in January. It was a modest update from the Pre, which was by all accounts a year old. These days, that's a lot of time in tech. We are no longer in the days of the Treo 700p. Companies are moving faster. The next product has likely been in the works for months. Unless they saw the writing on the wall months ago, their ship is already heading in what might be the wrong direction.
Agree, it will take at least for 4Q 2010 just the posibility of a new device launch. Lets say 408.000 per quarter. They need a Q and a half to clean up all the left inventory. Who would be the carrier for next Palm device? IMO all of them worldwide or at least the 4 most important ones at the same time.
The negative groundswell is going to hurt existing sales. I don't know how Palm curtails the PR issue they have right now. It's going to have an effect on potential customers and their carrier relationships. If you were AT&T, are you looking to take inventory of the Pre Plus? Carriers want exclusives. They are not in business to help Palm succeed. There is no incentive for them to carry a phone that will be available on the other carriers. One would say Verizon, but given the poor execution of the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, who knows if that would be the correct move. It's really a tough predicament. While I think Engadget did a fine job detailing the mistakes, the fixes are not as easy as one would think. Everyone is calling for a "Palm superphone" -- N1, iPhone slab with superior build quality, Snapdragon processor, glass display, etc. Does such a phone exist in the R&D department at Palm? Was this phone planned for this year? Both big questions. If it does exist, my guess is that it's full steam ahead on that phone, possibly scrapping plans for the Pre 2 (Qwerty slider). If that phone doesn't exist, perhaps HTC could build one -- and fast. Make no mistake, this is more than a hardware issue. There are software issues and there are issues with the lack of "quality" apps being developed. As for mistakes made by Palm, I think this article from last May makes for an interesting read in light of all the troubles surrounding the company today.
I was wondering ,how this smartphones manufacturing works. If Palm have around 550.000 units in inventory yet, how much of those are CDMA and how much of it are GSM. They are announcing the launch of Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on O2?? Maybe could be interesting to sell some stocks to some carriers, so they will push together Palm. Would they be interested? Now is the time for make those changes fast. You were right on what you said on that article. The question is, when are they going to come out from this stills Beta Version. It is taking too long, and it is hurting Palm.
Advertise the heck out of it, focusing on what it can do for ALL audiences & not marketing it as a "chick" phone.
Chris, are saying all around the web that those 906.000 units already shipped, are on the carriers not with Palm, but just sold the carriers 408.000 of it. Is that information correct? Thanks.
Marketing Communications Please Hey gang, The Palm Pre and Pixi are great devices (more on that later) and webOS is AMAZING. The fact is NOBODY knows it. Just walk into a Verizon store and seen if you can get an intelligent agent to explain the phone and it's features (doesn't happen and I try a lot - as an aside I post these results to twitter when I can). Truth be told, though the carrier channels are extremely dumb. Hey they can't explain anyone else's phone either. WebOS is SO different it takes a while, this is not an incremental change to Palm OS we are talking about, but a whole new game (BTW Palm has a black eye in my book for missing this obvious point). Today in the crowded and growing more crowded smartphone market you have to hit people over the head to get there attention and that simply hasn't happened yet. I recently posted a poll on twitter and asked what hardware should be changed and what software should be changed (I'll copy the results below). The short answer is people love the Pre, want it to move faster and be higher quality and same can be said for the webOS. Palm doesn't need a new phone form factor (AKA design) just keep working out the kinks in the world-class, breakthrough design they have and hit people over the head with the benefits and "newness" of what it can do My 2 cents, @prenotes Poll results
Thanks for the poll. When looking at Palm, you have to look at two groups. The current and often rabid Palm webOS user --- who acknowledges all the faults, but still wouldn't consider another device. Like many, I love webOS, but the story doesn't end there when discussing webOS. So many of the reports know focus on the greatness of webOS. It's almost as if writer's say -- OS isn't an issue, must be hardware. It's an elegant OS, but it's still lacking the speed of other operating systems. Looks great when you're swapping cards around, a clear advantage compared to how Android handles multi-tasking. I mean who doesn't love cards? Accessing menus, not as quick as it needs to be and I think your survey proves that out. People don't necessarily need a faster processor, but they do want speed. Is this a hardware issue? I doubt it, since the processor in the Pre is on par with the iPhone 3GS. That tells me that software needs optimization and it's been out for almost a year (more so if you count CES, but that's not fair). Hardware issues aside (and that's whole other topic) are something we see in our forums and over at P|C. I think your survey proves there are way too many hardware issues. Pre owners want a faster, more stable phone. Something that theoretically can be fixed by software improvements. The second group would be those who haven't considered the Palm Pre when purchasing a smartphone. Palm and their carriers need to shoulder the blame on this one. Palm has plenty of ex-Apple employees working for them and in many ways I find Palm products to reflect some of this influence. I think some of the business, marketing decisions also reflect an Apple influence. That being said, Palm is not Apple. What works for Apple, won't necessarily work for Palm.
