The new Palm Pre

Have you hear about the newest all conquering, smartphone, the Palm Pre? Maybe you have if you are a techie, but otherwise you probably could care less, and that is the problem. The phone is destined for the same fate as the awesome T-Mobile G1. That was also a tremendous phone with new technology and better and badder than the Iphone, yet has failed miserably at dethroning the champ from it's high loft. When predicting success of a smartphone, one has to identify what kind of person will buy each type and specific model of handset, and then market directly to those people. You also have to acknowledge that the competition will take away some of your business anyway, whatever kind of phone you have. You also have to think about the people that will be willing to fork out the big bucks the type of phone you are going to produce, particularly the business community who is more likely to use a smartphone anyway. Now, the Palm is strong in business, and the Pre has all kinds of entertainment and productivity features that consumers will enjoy, so it should be a natural seller, right? Not so fast. Business users need more secure phones capable of running proprietary applications and to connect with company databases. This is where phones like the Blackberry and Palm excel. It takes many years to get companies onto these platforms, and it is very hard for them to switch when they do commit, so the Palm users are unlikely to go to Blackberry and vice versa. So, Palm is unlikely to pick up many users from other businesses. Just like the Iphone failed to live up to its expectations in the business market, the new Palm is unlike to make any headway, especially since Palm as a company has seen sales declines over many years and is in a weakened position financially to promote and support it's phones. In fact, Sprint dealers are reporting that they have not been told to promote the Pre to business customers. So, who else is going to fork out that much for a smartphone that has all those fancy productivity tools, Grandma that wants a phone with only three buttons? I don't think so. Sprint is actually trying to promote the old school Treo to business customers, even though sales appear to have dismal. The Pre runs a brand new operation system which may be a challenge to integrate with existing customers, which is a problem for businesses which want stability and compatibility. Palm can't just seem to get it's act together. So, are consumers ready to pay several hundred dollars for just another Palm that, as far as I can tell, doesn't have anything special over the Iphone and doesn't look nearly as slick. The average consumer wants simplicity, applications, and a good looking phone they can show off to their friends. Apple obviously beats Palm and anyone else here. Apple has also done a far better job at marketing. So, why can't the other carriers get their act together, simply copy the Iphone and price it lower? Heaven knows.
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