arvino’s posterous

I follow and study Palm's innovation, campaign and business activities in the past 6-7 months, and from on what I saw I try to predict where Palm is going next, to stage their great innovative comeback. While my conclusion (below) might not be fully accurate, perhaps it could be useful in some ways.

A. WHAT IS THE OVERALL STRATEGY THAT PALM SEEMS PLAN TO TAKE?

Instead of sticking their device one Telco provider only, Palm seems to take a different strategy. They try to establish their product as a smartphone device that people can get from any network and any operator.

Such strategy is daring. It would entice big (and potentially long) battle ahead -- which of course would be dangerous to the (currently) cash-strapped and vurnerable Palm.

B. WHAT IS THEIR FIRST STEP ?

To overcome such danger, seems team Palm management team planned 3 pronge strategy:

1. Focus on one product only for the beginning. (Palm Pre).
   
2. Take the undefended market first. (CDMA - Sprint).
   
3. Expand, extend and build up further from there. (Leverage WebOS as their extensible platform).
   

This is very smart strategy, although it has its danger too. For example: would the Sprint CDMA customer base be sufficient enough to sustain Palm initial presence plan, and to support its bigger 'comeback' strategy? (My feel: it would).

C. IF THE FIRST STEP IS HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL, WHAT MIGHT COME NEXT ?

Yet if we assume that this initial strategy works great as Palm intend it to be, then what's would be the possible next step?

Seem to me that once their initial beach-head penetration is successful, Palm seem very likely to do something like this:

1. Extend their product lines beyond 'Palm Pre' only -- by leveraging the WebOS innovation strength and potential. (e.g. Introducing Palm EOS, and string of innovative WebOS-enabled Palm devices).
   
2. Make Palm Pre as well as Palm's other WebOS-based product available on any network; this includes Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and beyond. (As of today AT&T and Verizon already line up to start serving Pre, once the Palm-Sprint exclusive deal end by the end of this year).
   

D. EXCITING & DARING 'BUSINESS-INNOVATION BATTLE' AHEAD

This June 6, 2009 we will see how the market would respond to Palm first 'comeback attempt' into the marketspace it once created. If such step proven to be extremely successful, then we will probably eventually see an exciting series of even more daring, smart and innovative business initiatives and act being poured into the smartphone business and market.

The real big business-innovation battle would then soon begin!

We'll see how the future goes.

It's something that suppose to be 'beyond search', It's called a 'decision engine'. It will be available June 3, 2009
It's called bing. I sincerely hope it'd be really great.

Take a look at http://www.bing.com

Looking at how things develop at RIM with their Blackberry device, I guess RIM/Blackberry is a pretty smart company, because:

1. RIM/Blackberry know that the future of smartphone navigation and interaction system is 'touch' based, hence they prepare their blackberry handset to become 'touch' ready.
2. They know that -- across time -- cheaper Google phone and Palm WebOS-based devices could be a serious threat, hence they prepare 'more affordable' blackberries to complement their current stuff.
3. They know that some competitor (e.g. Palm Pre and some Korean based Google phone companies) might try to establish initial beachhead in the smartphone market by (initially dominating) the CDMA marketspace, hence they start creating a 'combo' blackberries that run well in CDMA space, as well as in GSM; or even both (CDMA+GSM).
4. They know that 'physical keyboard' is still something that many people in the marketplace love to have and interact with, hence they prepare a combo 'touch + keyboard' model code named Pluto (they will not allow Palm Pre to take this niche too easily by themselves).
5. They know that as the world get ready and getting increasingly excited about smartphone and mobile-internet-connected device, the competition and battle for smartphone market will never be over; and -- with the introduction of iPhone OS, Palm WebOS and Google Android -- there would be more and more competing company and competing product outthere; hence they prepare themselves for the upcoming battle.
   

As of now, seems RIM and its Blackberry device and service is at the most fit condition for the upcoming battle. Seems there's nothing wrong to what they do. And seems they never ceased to forget to innovate.

Looking at all above 'pluses', my 'worries' regarding RIM/Blackberry probably is only this:

• They 'do so many things at once' attempt -- running aggressive development on all platform (CDMA, GSM, combo) and on all kind of model (touch, keyboard, combo) at the same time. 

Why this is 'worrysome' ?? It's because although these 'multiple device strategy' is daring, exciting, respectable, smart and innovative for me, all these (hardware) innovations are all -- at the same time -- being based on, and underneath it rely upon their 'start to become aging' Blackberry OS!

Slower innovation on the Blackberry OS platform might eventually bring the whole house down. 

To me, seem Blackberry OS start to show some early sign of 'aging'. Visually and operationally the OS is (still) practical and simple to use (for today needs). Yet:

1. The Blackberry OS doesn't seem to be perfectly ready for massive multitasking that would happen more and more in the coming future as people would be running more and more application beyond email, SMS, telephone and chat. Nowadays Blackberry performance tends to slow down quite significantly once multiple applications running parallel in multitask mode.
   
2. The Blackberry OS doesn't seem to be perfectly ready to become a platform that would allow people build 'advanced application and cool stuff'' beyond messaging, chatting, SMS-ing and Yahoo Messenger. Blackberry current application development platform and language seems perfect for 'messaging' based apps, yet its underlying SDK seem significantly less powerful than others in areas 'beyond messaging'. This make development of native Blackberry applications seems grow slower than application growth in emerging platform (such as iPhone, Google phone, and perhaps the upcoming Palm Pre) that uses more modern languages and more fresh user experience approach towards native application development process.
3. The Blackberry business model and architectural setup doesn't seem to be perfectly ready for roaming process, whereby people travel from one country to another, from one region to another, which makes the power of 'Blackberry mobility' capability quite 'ridiculously costly' for Blackberry users that travel alot around the region, or around the globe.

People might say that above points are 'less important' for today, because the fact still shows (today) that Blackberry is (still) significantly the leading handset the market place. Yet, perhaps it doesn't take long for people to remember, than back in the early 2000s Palm Treo was the leading smartphone in the market. Everybody at that time was looking for a 'Palm Treo' killer; something that can 'beat' Palm Treo for the better. As time goes by, as Palm OS start showing its sign of aging -- and unfortunately Palm's user interface, OS and underlying system never been improved nor changed -- Blackberry 'suddenly' takes over.

At the current moment: RIM/Blackberry seem pretty solid. Their 'penetrate all segment by creating all kind of device at the same time' seems to be pretty perfect. But we will together see how RIM/Blackberry would overcome their Blackberry OS limitations in the near future.  And how their 'push, centralized subscription service and multifront device strategy' will adjust, transform, look like, and be; in the upcoming future. If they keep their rapid hardware innovation with significant OS innovation, Blackberry might keep its leading edge. Yet if they keep hardware innovation going, while their OS innovation still slower than it suppose to be, they might eventually come into a serious 'bump'.

We'll see how the future goes at RIM, with the Blackberry device (and the underlying Blackberry OS) at their helm.

... and the carrier for that phone would be: O2! (they win the Palm Pre bid against Vodafone and Orange, for the UK market).

Wow! Seems carrier now try to 'monopolize' consumer wireless choices, by winning the handset bids, and made the many loveable handset [that consumer wants] only exclusively available on their network!

In this case, as O2 is also the winner for exclusive distribution of iPhone in the UK market, if UK customer wants to have the latest smartest (and most innovative) smartphones (such as iPhone or Pre), they only can get it exclusively from O2 and through subsrciption to O2 wireless service only!

Wow!!

One logical and excellent deduction by "NullAgenda": With the introduction of Palm Pre, should iPhone be the one that worry, or should it be Blackberry instead?

Palm Pre -- Should RIM or Apple worry?

With reports of the Palm Pre launch just around the corner, it’s only natural to wonder how it will hold up against the existing competition.

Since the iPhone’s arrival many devices have tried (and failed) to challenge the iPhone’s mass consumer appeal, hype, and sleek aesthetics, but the Palm Pre appears to have a better chance at making its presence known. The user interface powered by the new Palm webOS as well as the clean and simple styling of the device may have captured the attention of many who would consider or own an iPhone, but the sheer strength of Apple and its AppStore (not to mention the huge subscriber base of AT&T) probably won’t slow the iPhone train anytime soon.

On the other side of the battle is RIM and their powerful BlackBerry brand. Although RIM has made pushes into the general consumer space with devices like the Storm and the launch of the AppWorld marketplace, their bread and butter still lies in the hands of business consumers, a sector the iPhone has not penetrated as easily. This however is an area where Palm has a strong history, and where RIM has grown at Palm’s expense.

The difference this time around is that consumers (thanks to the iPhone) are demanding a better user experience from the first time the phone is booted up, to the animations of message alerts. And from early demonstrations the Pre appears to handle this rather well, while the user interface on BlackBerry devices is beginning to show its age. This could be an area of concern for RIM since Palm has less convincing to do in the business world than the iPhone. If priced right, executed successfully, and an introduction to an additional carrier besides Sprint is achieved, the BlackBerry lineup may be caught flat-footed against the Pre with no apparent plans of a UI overhaul anytime soon.

In RIM’s favor, they are not sitting idle in the UI department, but with a new iPhone guaranteed to hit shelves soon, and the Palm Pre a few weeks away it’s hard not to believe they’ll be playing catch up.

http://nullagenda.com/palm-pre-should-rim-or-apple-worry-38

Here's another look at the Palm Pre. This time its excellent UI & UX design approach.
 
It is very very interesting to me that the Palm designers choose to design their screen layout to be be scrollable sideways -- left and right.
 
With this approach: at any time Palm user can see 'section' of the screen where their application 'card' resides. Yet if they want to see the 'remaining side of the screen' -- or the other 'application cards' that they have, they just simply need to flip the screen to the right or left, with quick simple scrolling gesture of their hand. The screen scrolls to the destination we intend to. It gives us a sense that the screen becomes 'flexibly wide' and seems almost 'have no boundary'.
 
Such approach and idea is a great breakthrough, and truly awesome too. It turns a tiny screen and its limited dimension to be come a huge flexible scrollable space that people can navigate around. Combined with the 'application card' approach, people no longer have to just take a look at application icons, instead they can interface and interact with the 'widgets' directly, on their tiny screen!
 
Such approach very similar with how we experience interactive games in the past. In interactive games, never we are limited by the screen boundary; instead the physical screen just become a 'frame' where we can navigate through a virtual space, freely, without boundary.
 
In a way, this approach also might be a great example of how a 'compiz' approach towards making virtual screen space wider and more spacious than its physical layout provide being adapted for limited sized mobile device.
 
It is truly awesome that Palm come up with such a great idea. I am so sure this 'application card' approach would become a great popular trend (or approach) for designing mobile user interface and user experience, today and in the very near future.

Seems Palm is ready to be back in the game. It's latest Palm Pre that was introduced just today is magnificent.
 
The key features that I like truly like from the new well designed device: Beautiful innovative software, splendid fresh intuitive wonderful looking UI that makes both user interaction and consolidated information management and interaction around the web superbly integrated, smart, intuitive and easy, physical keyboard and design that offer best combination in touch and keyboard interface.
 
These drive and thinking ahead innovations are truly truly awesome.
 
I am so glad that Palm's innovation, coolness and mojo is back! This is truly truly truly truly awesome!

Just a few minutes ago, Palm announced at CES, their new palm device!
Called Pre, it looks awesomely cool! It got tons of beautiful web-sync ideas too!!
 
Here's a peek as of tonight (Jan 9, 2009; 2:00am)

Slick curve design. Sleek vertical keyboard. Yikes!!
John Rubinstein rocks!!
 
Click here to follow the entire livecast: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/live-from-palms-ces-press-conference/
 
Enjoy!

I checked Palm website today, and I found it totally have changed. It looks truly awesome.
 
I guess if Palm is doing this also in preparation to the upcoming release of its brand new latest new device (which is based on its brand new Palm OS) this Thursday, then it is a preparation that is really well done. The new site really look truly awesome.
 
I sincerely look forward to see a brand new device (and brand new operating system) that really looks awesome, and truly work as great too. Rumors said that the brand new device has a touch screen interface on top, with a physical keyboard beneath it. I guess this is one of the best form factor for modern palm computing device these days.
 
I sincerely hope Palm would be able to introduce a truly great new device; It's about time they make a great comeback!

Started in 1984, year 2008 mark the 24th year evolution of Mac system and platform. From popularizing the mouse concept (click and drag) to introducing the groundbreaking touch interface; from introducing the classic Mac, to 'simultaneously' bringing the brand new iMac, iPod and iPhone interface to the market, Mac's system and platform transformation filled with exciting series of: (1) daring innovation, (2) inspiring leadership, (3) iconic branding.

At each stage, the Mac evolution also mark a significant transformation milestone, of how: (1) our live and work increasingly being computerized and digitized through computers that is meticulously designed to be not only beautiful, but also 'human friendly', (2) how human interaction with computers being redesigned in tremendous detail for extreme simplicity and practicality, and (3) how our lives increasingly made more connected, integrated, automated and mobile -- with (and through) the internet.

It would be so much exciting to see how all these great platform of innovation would evolve further in 2009, forming the 25th year evolution of the innovative, exciting, and great Mac platform.