GM and Ford can use Palm’s Simple Plan to Save Taxpayers $30 Billion
I saw all of the videos from CES of the new Palm "Pre" phone this week. I was pretty impressed, to say the least. I was discussing it as a challenger to the iPhone (don’t say killer) with a friend at work.
We both came to the same Earth-Shattering conclusion. (more on that later)
First, a little history on Palm Inc.
Palm completely owned the PDA market space to the point that they were as synonymous with PDA as Band-Aid (brand) was with adhesive bandages. Windows mobile made a better OS and HP made a better device and there went that market.
Then, they came out with the Treo and single handedly created the "Smart Phone" category. It did so many things, but had so many annoyances at the same time. Even after a few iterations they still have not ironed out the dings that make the Treo annoying. Along comes Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbian and again, they’re an also-ran. These phone/OS combinations were tough enough competition, but then the iPhone comes out and destroys everyone.
GM and Ford could just read this simple five step plan:
- Buy a Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.
- Pay a few designers from Toyota and Honda triple their current salaries to come to America.
- Make a shameless rip-off of each car.
- Sell lot’s of them.
- When another competitor starts stealing your market share, repeat as necessary.
|
So Palm has been scuffling around for the better part of a decade running a household name into the ground. They have not adapted or innovated their products in any way that keeps up with the pack. How many times have they been on the brink of death in the last few years alone?
What does Palm do in the face of this? Well they grab themselves a JesusPhone and a few of the Apostles that helped create it. Next they just break out the photocopier. They build something that appears to capture all of the splendor of the iPhone experience. That alone would have been a small miracle, but they didn’t stop there. They took a look at a few of the tiny knocks on the iPhone.
- Apple’s ridiculous closed platform (links to articles)
- Camera with no Flash or Video
- No physical keyboard
- Poor multitasking / task switching
- No copy and paste
They came up with reasonable solutions to these problems.
Read more…
Gadgets, Miscellaneous Ramblings, Movies, Product Reviews, Web Surfing
auto bailout, bailout, Ford, GM, iPhone, palm, palm pre
Recent Comments