Palm Pre – Newest Smartphone from old Apple Exec
Rounding out Dinner Topics’ tech weekend, today’s post is about the new smartphone from Palm, available only on the Sprint network for the time being, called the Palm Pre. It seems like new phones are released every day, and half of them claim to be an “iPhone killer,” but this one deserves a post on this site because of the Palm connections to Apple.
First, a little about the phone: it has a touchscreen, syncs to calenders, email, etc., has a slide out keyboard, plays video and music, and yes, makes phone calls. Will it replace the iPhone? Heck no. Does it look a little like the iPhone (and about a dozen others)? Yes. Will anyone other than tech heads or Apple fanboys care about the minor differences (yet another new operating system for mobile devices called webOS) introduced in the Palm Pre? No.
The reason this makes for a dinner topic, however, is the creator of the Pre, Jon Rubinstein, was hired away from Apple in 2007, where he had plenty of input into the creation of the original iPod. Now at Palm (the company responsible for that $300 electronic address book called a “PDA” currently sitting in your junk drawer), Rubinstein is trying to recapture a little magic with another new device. The problem this time is that the “new” device (just like everyone else’s “new devices” of late) is not new – it’s just a retread of an Apple product – possibly better, possibly worse, but not new. In fact, Rubinstein used his Apple experience on the Pre so that the Pre can sync through iTunes, something Apple may look to contest down the road.
Simply, sales of the Pre (thanks to a lack of supply among other things) will barely dent the iPhone’s market share. Twelve months from now, the Pre hype will fade, alongside the Samsung Instinct, the HTC Touch (what? exactly.), and a handful of Blackberry phones with one-syllable names. Whether you have an iPhone in your hand or one of the aforementioned models, you will be content with it, and at least now you’ll have a story to tell when someone brings up “the next iPhone killer.”
(Palm Pre image taken from www.uncrate.com/men/gear/cell-phones/palm-pre/)
Read on:
Bloomberg.com – Palm Pre Supplies Are Scarce in Phone’s Debut Weekend
AllThingsD.com – Palm’s New Pre Takes On iPhone
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