How Palm Screwed Up

from the executiion-efficiency dept

Palm Computing is certainly in trouble these days. This article explains why a lot of it is their own fault. It includes this great, understated quote from an analyst: "They haven't exactly proven themselves to be the most execution-efficient company." They still have a market share lead, but the fact is they've been incredibly slow to innovate. Many folks (myself included) used to really like the Palm devices, but now see how much more a Pocket PC has to offer. Depending on what you need it for, the Palm still fills the low end of the market, but it's still essentially the same device as the Palm Pilot I bought five years ago.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    John, 12 Oct 2001 @ 12:45pm

    I Agree

    This is absolutely true. The "killer app" for Palm in my eye has been the form factor of the Palm V and 500 series. But now PocketPCs are getting darn close to that form factor.

    I own a Compaq IPaq and a m505. I still think that Palms are simply a better organiser, and that is the one I carry, leaving the IPaq home for my wife to play games on. The organizer functions are 90% of what I use it for anyhow. But the power of the PocketPCs constantly has me tempted. Palm has got to get serious about using a real CPU, putting some multimedia punch to these things, and giving it a serious memory upgrade. Unfortunately for them, they need this product yesterday.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    alternatives(), 12 Oct 2001 @ 3:45pm

    Power existed in 1997 - the Newton

    Ever wanted to record something? How about play a video clip? Telnet into a system via ethernet/modem while typing with a keyboard? Web Browse?

    Guess what? The newton did all of that. In 1997.

    The palm had to things going for it.
    1) Price
    2) size

    They knew what was a win, and have not deviated from that win. Eventually PocketPC will get to size, and Palm is working on raising its price by moving up to a ARM processor.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.