Two totally unrelated stories for your interest over a nice hot cup of tea... 1) A look back at Palm's 2009 on Royal Pingdom and how they failed to make the most of their early advantage with WebOS and the Palm Pre; 2) Nokia's Rick Simonson doing a non-denial denial that the Finnish company would be interested in buying Palm. We're certainly living in interesting times, and I wonder what the mobile landscape will look like in a year's time.
Read on in the full article.
What on earth would Nokia gain from buying Palm?
Why on earth would Nokia want to buy Palm? I can imagine that Elevation Partners (Bono et al) would want to sell Palm after they have sunk 430 million dollars in it for 30% of the shares, but Nokia going to pay more than a 1000 million dollars for an entry into the US market, I don't think so.
Here complete Rick Simonson interview.
A lot more interesting points than Palm...
Looks like Bono needs some cash...
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/01/04/bono-warns-the-world-against-rampant-piracy/
I think it very unlikely that Nokia would buy Palm. RIM might be a more likely.
I would imagine the most likely scenario is Palm's investors putting in money a couple more times and then it'll end up going the way of the Dodo. Of course there are a few companies who might fight over the corpse for the sake of a few software idea / patents / people / brand name etc.
"What on earth would Nokia gain from buying Palm?"
A modern UI instead of the p.o.s. S60/Symbian?
One could have a dream : people on the Palmbeach , picking Blackberries from their Nokia devices , while Apples move around in the Rim ?
😊 Regards jApi NL
Neither Hardawar (Royal Pingdom) or Kelleher (at GigaOm) seem to understand much about making or marketing mobile phones.
Palm had to do one simple thing in 2009: play a hand that keeps them in the game. The Palm Pre is a beautiful device, with a responsive multi-touch UI, bright screen and snappy web browsing. I have been using one for a few months and although imperfect it is a joy to use - Palm are definitely back.
Palm's silence between CES 2009 and the launch announcement in May would have been pretty much out of Palm's hands - they could not announce the sale date until Sprint were happy that the firmware was good enough to sell in their shops.
Sure tying up with Sprint restricted the available market, but having an exclusive operator means that the network is going to put the device at the front of the store and pay for much of the marketing. Sprint like any other telco wants iconic devices that bring them new customers.
Launching with Sprint would have been good for Palm in other ways, such as allowing them to manage the ramp up of production. Suddenly going from zero to maximum production capacity pretty much guarantees that problems will strike such as scratching of camera lenses.
Sprint and Telefonica/O2 have also been very responsive in supporting Palm's distribution of firmware updates over the air - each time there is an update 70% of users update within a week. By comparison the v31 firmware for my T-Mobile branded Nokia 5800 has only just shown up. I also have to be at home to check for the Nokia firmware updates via PC Suite, as there is no server configured in the phone to do this over the air.
Developers are pretty geared up for the opening of the App Store - I'm sure that Palm are going as fast as they can in getting the tools released.
At the beginning of 2010 Palm are still a player where many people had already written them off. Palm have a great deal more to do in 2010, and Thursday's announcement at CES will certainly have distribution to more operators as one of the keynotes.
All in all 2010 is going to be a very interesting year for Smartphones. The Nexus One is finally a Google Android phone that is attractive to look at and a pleasure to use. (In my brief encounter I noticed the bright AMOLED screen, sensitive capacitive touch and screen transitions prettier & faster than the Palm Pre.) Will Apple stretch the same iPhone format for a fourth iteration, surely to stay fashionable they have to bring something new to the party. Will Nokia's N900 appeal only to Linux nerds, or will the Maemo phone draw in new customers?
Unfortunately for tonyn, Palm Pre sales don't agree.
Before going nokia I was into Palm. That 650 treo was nice for its day, and for some reason palm fell asleep and did not make any significant improvements over the years while those berries and apples got darker and sweeter. Not sure what Nokia would gain from this purchase but only time will tell.
Might be some good pipeline R & D.
now that nokia made maemo mainstream, why would they need webOS? I am using both the Pre and the N900, after trickling down the iPhone to my wife (it is a girl's phone, isn't it?) and returning the over-hyped Droid to the store. the N900 just blows away everything else in the market (and I am NOT a linux nerd, just a plain Macbook user). I am maintaining the pre because of its small form factor, still blessed with a qwerty keyboard, and its messenging functions (the only area where the N900 still feels really clumsy, although not unusable).
@unregistered
>Unfortunately for tonyn, Palm Pre sales don't agree.
I'm a bit sentimental about Palm because they have been around for quite a while, and before stumbling they had made the transition from PDAs to Smartphones quite successfully. The important thing for Palm is that (a) they survived 2009, and (b) sales & share price in December 2009 were up on December 2008.
For 2010 Palm are coming out batting, already announced are: new ('Plus'😉 editions of the Pre & Pixi on Verizon in the US in January; Pre & Pixi devices selling in France on SFR (Vodafone is a share holder) in the 1st quarter; and 2 WebOS devices will be sold by AT&T in the 1st half of the year.
Nevertheless I cannot see much appeal for Nokia. Palm have CDMA smartphones, and Nokia can much more easily have CDMA smartphones now that they are new best friends with Qualcomm. Palm have good operator relationships in the US, and Nokia can too if they put in the necessary effort.