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Originally Posted by heimlich
Don't you think that Palm knows what to put in their phone? I'm sure they hire some of the top people to research their phones.
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Actually, no, I don't. I think Palm is strugling greatly. As their competitors continually update their products with new designs, features, and technologies, Palm continues to tinker around the edges. They've shown me nothing that would indicate they have a clue.
Hire top people? Not likely. Palm's capitalization is tiny compared to most of their competitors. They simply can't afford the kind of R&D budget than Apple, Sony, Nokia, Motorola, et al. have at their disposal.
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The market will determine whether they live or die and not the some odd number of your individuals ranting on about what they should or shouldn't do.
If they start to loose a market share they will notice it and they will, most likely, change their direction, that is, if they want to continue to be in business. And more than likely when they change their direction they might alienate a few people on the way in order to pick up a larger segment. It's just business. Money talks and the minority usually don't win.
Just look at the fact that they put WM on their device. I'm sure they really had to suck their gut up to do that but look what it brouht them.
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They're already losing market share. Big time. And they've shown no indication of being able to successfully change direction. You're assuming management makes smart decisions. That's frequently not true. Owners and managers, just like eveyone else, make decisions for all kinds of reasons. They can get emotionally involved with their designs and products, and refuse to acknowledge their weaknesses. They can focus on a narrow view of reality, while missing the bigger picture. And they can be resource constrained, unable to attract the talent or capital necessary to adapt.
Palm has done nothing since the Treo 600 (which wasn't Palm by the way, it was Handspring) to show they're capable of innovating in ways the market will appreciate. Frankly, I think the last real Palm innovation was the Palm V, which was little more than a color screen and a thinner case on top of an existing product.
Palm's made lots of decisions that were simply bizzare. How much money, time, and effort has Palm wasted selling the OS, and the name, and buying back the name, and the rights to the OS? How much time, money and effort was wasted on the Foleo, at the expense of improvements to their core product?
Their first attempt at a modern OS was a fiasco, which turned out to be unusable. Why are we to assume that the Linux based OS will be any better? Given how long it's taking them to actually build it, I won't be at all surprised to see it still born, too.
I've loved Palm products over the years, but given their history over the last several years, I'm not optomistic for the future.