Palm Back in the Game?

Palm today finally did something interesting, after a pretty decent hiatus, by announcing the Pre running the all new webOS. However the first paragraph of the press release gives us fair indication of how they got into their current situation; “webOS… built from the ground up to be constantly connected to the web” looks nice on paper, but as anyone who owns or uses a mobile phone will tell you the reality is quite different – even in a major city like London coverage is an issue, especially if using HSPA or 3G networks, and constant connections kill battery life.

Jacqueline du Pre - in whose honour Palm named their new device

The device itself is actually quite good looking and boasts some decent features, and web-based apps to encourage developers. Most interestingly, sensors seem to be the order of the day, with the Pre boasting not only an Apple-style accelerometer but also proximity and light sensors too. While the normal uses for these appears quite mundane, if Palm open up the APIs for developers there are bound to be some interesting applications built - we should just pray they have got involved in the Javascript API standardisation process else we’ll see a rerun of early JavaME API fragmentation.

For my money, the beauty of the original Palm devices was the rock solid reliability, mega battery life and the ability to play the mighty Space Trader. However it’s unlikely that the Pre will share these attributes (Space Trader aside) and one has to also ask the wisdom in entering an already massively crowded market segment. The Pre will be going head to head not just with the iPhone, Storm and G1 but also the “iPhone killers” from all of the major handset manufacturers.

If Palm had really wanted to get back amongst it  they should have come up with a device along the lines of the rumoured iPhone Nano – a slightly lower spec’d, smaller phone boasting great battery life together with a limited set of applications and services that were just done really well. This is where the mobile phone market is set to get interesting in the next year - Apple are most likely taking a look at this space as its where the big OEMs ship major volumes and make most of their money. If/when Apple do eventually launch a phone aimed at the Series40 users out there (all X hundred million of them) things will really get interesting. It’s a shame Palm probably won’t be around to see it.