blog:Palm: Likely to Stumble with Pre
On June 6, Palm (PALM) will release the Pre, a smartphone many hope will fuel a resurgence of a company long since fallen from grace. But numerous miscalculations and missteps endanger this hoped-for turnaround.
A once-proud Silicon Valley icon, Palm has been hyping the Pre since January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There’s been much cause for optimism that the Pre will live up to its hype. Demand for smartphones is on the rise. The number of smartphones sold in the first quarter rose 12.7%, to 36.4 million, even as total cell-phone sales declined, according to research released in May by Gartner (IT).
Palm hosted an impressive debut of the Pre at CES. And at the outset, the company made an attempt to court a community of software developers who would be at the forefront of creating all manner of rich applications that will make the Pre both useful and fun to a range of buyers.
Palm’s Development Delays
I should know. I led early attempts to organize and rally the community. Our flagship event, preDevCamp, drew together roughly 1,000 volunteer developers in more than 85 cities around the world. Before those efforts could come to fruition, it became apparent to me and other leaders that Palm’s early enthusiasm for the community was halfhearted at best. I and some of my associates ultimately parted ways with Palm after a series of events that has been discussed at length elsewhere. I won’t rehash it in detail here, but ultimately we didn’t believe we had the backing from Palm we would need to ensure success.
In fairness, one of Palm’s senior vice-presidents has posted a blog stating the company’s support for preDevCamp. But remember that Palm’s developer network has been largely dormant for three to four years; not immediately embracing its reinvigorated efforts is shortsighted and will prove costly.
The chain of events caused me to step back and look at Palm in a new light, but my concerns about the success of the Pre relate to far more than the company’s treatment of developers
Tags: Palm