Palm said to be up for sale

[maflynn]

Kind of amazing to see that the Pre has only been out for 10 months and Palm is already closing up shop.

They're not closing up shop and the WebOs will be around. The problem was that they delayed the next generation OS, so long that people stopped buying treos in favor of iPhones/BlackBerrys. Their income stream all but dried up, and they banked on the promise of large sales to sustain them as they started rolling out new phones with the new OS.

The problem is that the initial phones felt cheap, were of extremely poor quality - I've been reading that most palm users had to send in the phone at least once and failed to deliver an SDK/App store in a timely manner. That being the case, they didn't sell as many as they needed to keep going and basically ran out of cash.

The design of the OS appears solid enough, but with the money problems and now up for sale, I'm sure development on the platform is going to grind to a halt and even internally.

 

[yellow]

Hrm.. so does this mean the Palm Pre was not the iPhone killer it was touted to be pre-debut?

 

[BergerFan]

Palm's problem(well one of many), was in waiting so long after showcasing WebOS at CES in January 2009, gaining a bucketload of traction, only to let it ebb away for 6 months, and then launch the Pre just after Apple launched the 3GS.

Let's not even go there with their ad campaigns and putting all their hardware eggs into the Pre and Pixi basket, when WebOS should've been on a lot more devices.

Hrm.. so does this mean the Palm Pre was not the iPhone killer it was touted to be pre-debut?

'Palm Pimp' has been conspicuous by his/her absence of late.

 

[maflynn]

when WebOS should've been on a lot more devices.

One has to wonder if they were capable of putting it on more then two devices. The quality track record of the palm pre is pretty poor and its not like they had a ton of cash floating around to invest in multiple phones. Plus they hired a bunch of apple guys. I mean by that is, apple only has one phone so they may have had that mind set as well.

Also don't forget hooking up with sprint with an exclusive arrangement didn't help them - contracting with a carrier that's been bleeding more money then they were.

 

[kdarling]

Even Palm recently admitted that they screwed up in all the ways that everyone else had been telling them:

1) Going exclusive on Sprint first.
2) Selling on Verizon _after_ the Droid. See (1)
3) Poor advertising.
4) Initial manufacturing problems.
5) Trying to stop sideloaded apps at first.

Despite the marketing mistakes, WebOS has one of the best phone UIs around, especially for multitasking and notifications. In some ways, it reminds me of NeXT, something cool being created by ex-Apple folk, doing what Apple wouldn't allow.

It would be great if HTC put WebOS on their HD2 platform, just as they've done with WM and Android.

 

[*LTD*]

I'll take it for 50 bucks.