In Greek tragedy, the flaw of hubris was the decisive plot point that brought down many great men. Palm, then, is the Oedipus of a modern tragedy, their efforts to rebuild hampered by a failure to see past their own greatness and a refusal to enter the market on the market’s terms.
To be honest, I was a Palm fan, then I wasn’t a Palm fan, and now am part of the chorus of voices bemoaning the lowly state to which the company has been thrust. Palm recently reported $349 million in revenue with a third quarter loss of $102.8 million. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said:
“If we could have launched at Verizon prior to the Droid, I think we would have gotten the attention the Droid got. And since I believe we have a better product, I think we could have even done better.”
That’s right: when the going gets rough, blame outside forces. Palm had a huge build-up at CES when the Palm Pre was first announced and now they’re taking a page from Apple’s playbook and boosting the Pre and Pixi Plus devices with some memory and processing power. Sadly, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, especially when the gander is losing profits. Palm shipped 960,000 units last quarter and, as Giz points out, sold 400,000 of them. Someone is buying Palm handsets, but 400,000 isn’t a big number.
Palm needs to sell itself. Their IP is strong and their brand is strong and well-known. Someone like HTC could take Palm and run with it, bringing Palm’s social-media connected OS to a whole new set of consumers. But things need to change and quickly.
We’ve had a few interesting reports of folks having huge problems with the AT&T Nexus Ones. Here we see a lad tap-tap-tapping away, unable to get anything pressed.
I’m calling BS on these but it looks like these are screenshots for BlackBerry OS 6.0 complete with widgets out the wazoo. Clearly the thought here is to bring BB into the 21st century, a move that’s sorely needed by BlackBerry’s current sad sack OS. The fact that there are no other specs point to some kind of leaked app and little more.
From: The Windows Phone 7 Team
To: The Windows Phone 7 Advertising Gnomes
After months of deliberation, we hereby present the master plan for all modern mobile commercials.
To acquire:
Rights to Feist instrumental break
Cute woman with curly hair (personable)
Handsome, rugged man in vaguely military but alternative shirt
Record shop (build)
Shot-for-shot outdoor location list for all McDonald’s commercials
Plot:
1. Woman sends messages
2. Woman uses “Facebook” (a social networking site. This site is unavailable from internal Microsoft workstations. Use a “public access point” to view it. DO NOT CREATE AN ACCOUNT.)
3. Woman takes pictures
4. Woman checks maps
5. Man looks at woman in a way that suggests the desire for intercourse.
Repeat this commercial until next Super Bowl or until Apple changes their ad style, whichever comes first.
Super sleuths at MS Mobiles (Motto: “Our small phone-shaped favicon is so outdated it’s popular again”) is accusing Microsoft of wholesale theft and battery in their new WinPho UI. KLM’s inflight whatsitcalled looks just like Microsoft’s whatsitcalled and the big blue buttons appear on KLMs entertainment whatchamacallit when you fly on their big, beautiful planes. Is it borrowing or is it theft?
Considering that Microsoft probably has the cash to buy KLM right now, I’m not too worried that this will go to lawsuit. But come on, guys. You can’t create something novel?
The Softs of Micro note that their new UI was inspired by “airports.” MSI Mobile suggests that they were really thinking of one particular airline.
Imagine this with Bing inside. It’s easy if you try.
If I were a spit takin’ man, I’d do a spit take right now. Motorola, stalwart of freedom, will work with Chinese carriers to add Bing to Chinese Android-based phones, ousting Google Search and Maps from the scene. Now this isn’t meanness on Motorola’s part although Reuters notes that this move could have something to do with that whole Great Chinese Google Hacking Incident a few weeks ago.
Considering most Google interaction in Android comes in the form of widgets – Motorola has their own syncing system and UI, for example, called MotoBLUR which stores your information in the could for easy uploading to any MotoBLUR phone (think of the way the Sidekick used to do it and how great that went for them) – and apps. Because Android is ostensibly open, you can take the source and put whatever you want on it. To wit: AT&T stuck Yahoo onto the new Backflip.
So while this all may seem fairly political, it probably isn’t. Search is search and Android is Android, in the end, and when and if Google decides to get vindictive with Android adopters – cutting out major functionality if you fail to use Google apps, for example, then things will really get hairy.
Olive, an Indian telecom, is releasing a phone that can be powered for a brief period using a single AAA battery. While it still has a main, rechargeable battery, this wonk-tastic phone has polyphonic ringtones, an FM radio, and a calculator! Best of all you can play Bollywood hits on it!
Obviously this is for a much different market than ours and it’s a great idea – except that stuffing a AAA battery in here is only slightly less wasteful than throwing away the internal rechargeable one and buying a new one. I suppose someone, somewhere needs this.
Remember Project Pink? Whatever Microsoft’s secret hardware initiative was? Well, it’s real and it’s coming to Verizon. You’ll see the Turtle, shown here, first, and it will be sort of a Sidekick that won’t run Windows Phone. Verizon will launch this like they did the Droid, aiming the might of their armies at flogging this to the feature phone user.
Giz has information that says that this isn’t a Windows Phone phone. But what does that mean? John Herrman opines:
It’s suggested that the platform has apps of some sort. For a phone like this to share apps with Windows Phone 7 is pretty much impossible, so this one’s a big question mark. Is it another SDK? Or closed app development like we’ve seen on the Zune HD?
Could it be a branch of Windows Phone designed for the feature/Java phone market? Will we ever know?
Dwight “The Houston Tiger” Silverman, like so many tech dudes, likes the Palm Pre and Pixi and, in a way, doesn’t understand why Palm is on the rocks. However, he got an email from a reader who described her Verizon experience as sub-par at best. It began poorly:
My original salesperson, upon hearing me say I was there for the Palm Pre, immediately mentioned that they were running a special on the Droid. I said terrific but I’m here for the Pre. The salesman finally got one out for me but no one at Verizon had any idea how it worked, how to set it up, or even how the screen functioned. It took Verizon over 3 hours just to the Pre “set up”, apparently because “the guy” who knew about the Pre was not there. I lovingly took my Pre home.
And got worse. Generally, it feels like Verizon and, to a degree, Sprint, have lumped WebOS in with the rest of the feature phones OSes. It’s not flashy enough to be an iPhone killer nor is it popular enough to beat Android in the mindshare game. It’s a floater, friends, and we all know where those eventually go.
Mmmm… there’s nothing better for lunch than a tasty sandwich of John Gruberisms. Today John looks at Windows Phone, noting his concerns with the platform in his usual calm, inimitable style.
The bigger naming question: Why name it “Windows” anything? If Microsoft is going for a clean break, why not a new non-“Windows” name? I think it shows just how perverse Microsoft’s obsession with “Windows” is. There’s no good way to leverage their Windows PC OS monopoly to extend it to mobile, other than the name, so they’re sticking with it. It doesn’t even make literal sense. The whole point of the “Windows” name is that it was for a system whose UI revolved around the concept of on-screen windows. There are no windows in the Windows Phone 7 interface. (There’s also no Start menu in the WP7 UI; that was the linchpin of UI similarity between Windows (for PCs) and Windows Mobile.)
He’s not saying much we don’t already know but he mentions something I forgot about, the Osborne Effect. If you’ve ever wondered why camera companies are such dicks when it comes to releasing news, it’s because of this. If you have product in channel and pre-announce something, that previous product will be construed, in general, as garbage. Here’s a fun example:
In 1978, North Star Computers announced a new version of their floppy disk controller, which had double the capacity, to be sold at the same price as their existing range. Sales of the existing products plummeted and the company almost went bankrupt.
So you’re looking for a Nokia smartphone that’s not too smart. Why not try the $183 C5, a candybar S60 phone with 2.2-inch display. It has Ovi Maps built-in and some messaging apps, but seriously, this is a meh-phone. Sorry, Nokia. Next?
Poor Jon Rubinstein. After a strong, early push, Palm’s sales have slowed and revenue has dried up with $300-$320 million in Q3. Their “guidance” to Wall Street AKA how much they expected to make? $1.6-1.8 billion. Bloops.
This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being. On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March.
I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March. In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales.
Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales. To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.
What’s holding things up? Three things: Android, Android, and Android. Palm used to be the alternative to monolithic mobile phone manufacturers like RIM and Microsoft. With the iPhone grabbing the hipster market and Android grabbing the nerds – and RIM still runs the business roost – Palm has no home in this world anymore.
My prediction? The next company to face these problems is, in fact, RIM. If Windows Mobile 7 figures things out, they’ll have both the casual and business markets buttoned up. Smartphones can now do everything RIM does and better.
Short Version: Hey ladies! Your Droid is here. The Motorola Devour (it’s actually DEVOUR but I refuse to shout at you) is a social media Android phone with enough style to beat down a million Droids. But is it just one more brick in the Android wall?
Features:
Amazing extruded aluminum case
MotoBLUR UI
Full keyboard
Removable battery
3.5mm headphone jack
Pros:
Removable storage
Good interface performance
MotoBLUR adds lots of social networking features
Cons:
A true toss-up between Droid and Devour
Cramped keyboard
Heavy
Review:
As if there were any doubt as to whether the Droid was from Mars and the Devour was from Venus, just think about last Devour commercial featuring an unclothed Megan Fox taking pictures of herself in a tub.
Here, let me show you it:
The Droid, if you recall, is a man’s phone. It is everything the Devour isn’t: thin, lithe, ready to cut, and mean like a snake. The Devour is the MacBook of the Motorola line, clad in soft, soothing aluminum and graced with an elegance that haven’t seen out of Motorola since the RAZR.
The Phone
The phone has a full 3.5mm jack and slide down keyboard. It has a small, hidden slot for a MicroSD card – it includes 8GB out of the box – and is fairly featureless except for three buttons on the right edge and a main optical trackpad/button below the message indicator. The 3.1-inch, 320×480 pixel display is quite handsome but it does not support multi-touch. There are three soft buttons, menu, home, and back, along the bottom edge.
The keyboard is extremely usable but very cramped. I had some initial trouble hitting the right keys because the space bar is crammed in between the V and the B, thereby putting off my sense of key balance when typing.
The case is the real draw, here. The extruded aluminum is extremely rugged and the screen slides up like a tank shell getting ready to lock and load. While it’s elegant, it also means business.
MotoBLUR
I was pleased to note that MotoBLUR, Motorola’s special UI, ran very well on the 600MHz processor. I had used Blur before on the Cliq and it was bogged down and slow. Here I found a strong and quick window into messages and social networks.
The best thing? If you already have a MotoBLUR phone, you can log into your BLUR account and bring over all of your previous Facebook, GMail, Twitter, Tooter, and Pooter accounts.
Calling and network
Ooof. What happened, Verizon? I live in Brooklyn. You guys are supposed to be the pasta fazool out here. Calls were tinny and soft and you dropped a few times. 3G load times are strong but just on par with the iPhone 3GS. These were obviously anecdotal tests and a quick DSLReports speed test gave me 1495 kbit/sec, which is speedier than AT&T’s 3G at my location.
Price
The Devour ranges from $100 at Best Buy to $150 elsewhere, both with two year contract. You also obviously need a data plan. This is the same price as the Droid. Which should you buy? Bottom Line John at Giz asks whether the Droid will always win in a Droid/Devour shoot-out. They are, after all, the same price on the same carrier. I think, however, the two phones are different in intent. The Devour is a fashion-forward social media phone. The Droid is a “geek” phone or, if you like, an app phone. Granted, these phones are essentially the same. However, the Devour is clearly aimed at a less geeky consumer.
Android can be all things to all people, and that’s what’s happening here. The Devour is, in the aggregate, a phone for those less interested in high tech and more in high art. However, with the Droid and this launch, it’s clear that Moto has got its groove back.
A Swedish interview with Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg found the jolly head of SE’s floundering handset business reporting that he turned down making the Nexus One for Google because it would dilute the majestic Sony Ericsson brand.
Here’s the weirdly translated money shot:
But Google got turned down. Brand [Recital… awareness? “Varumärkesskäl vägde tyngre.”] weighed heavier. Sony Ericsson will only produce phones under its own brand and not be subcontracted to others.
HTC made a huge name for itself by subcontracting for others and their work has won accolades, giving them a great stepping stone towards manufacturing their own goodies. SE could do well to take a page from their playbook but I fear it’s already too late.
Shout could save your life. It’s a voice-activated texting program for Android that listens to your message and recipient (“Text Joe ‘It’s herpes, it’s not transmittable right now’”) and Shout repeats the message and, after you press the big “Yes” button, sends the text message. I could definitely imagine using this in a car or on a high-wire strung between two buildings over Cincinnati. You can download it here or take a picture of the QR code above. It seems to be offloading the voice recognition, which is pretty cool, and at the low, low price of free$2.99 (sorry), it’s worth a second look.
RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis started blabbering on in an interview about network applications for the Blackberry platform. Was he thankful that developers were creating rich applications for his phones? Was he excited for the future? No. He started horking about “conserving bandwidth,” just like AT&T’s CEO:
“Manufacturers had better start building more efficient applications and more efficient services. There is no real way to get around this.”
“If we don’t start conserving that bandwidth, in the next few years we are going to run into a capacity crunch. You are already experiencing the capacity crunch in the United States.”
“That is pretty fundamental to a carrier as that means you can have three paying Blackberry browsing customers for every one other customer.”
“That has a huge advantage for the carriers if you think about the many billions of dollars the carriers have invested over the last five years in spectrum auctions and infrastructure rollouts.”
While I agree with his sentiment – programmers need to be aware of how much bandwidth they’re sucking down – in practice the idea of “conservation” is ludicrous. We will, in the end, be using cellular networks for almost all of our connectivity. Cable and DSL companies know this and they’re running scared and AT&T already knows this simply because they’ve created a product popular with the kind of nerds carriers hate, nerds who use more than their share of bandwidth.
Carriers seem to think subscribers should be corralled. Not only is this an affront to everything capitalism stands for, it is a grave miscalculation. Carriers make investments based on subscription fees. It’s not like they’re losing money by offering a public service – see the Postal Service – they are making money offering something that the government (read “we”) gave them.
Mobile CEOs: hire evangelists to tell mobile programmers how to conserve bandwidth. Heck, you can even talk about bandwidth conservation at the golf games you have with each other. Do not, however, say those words out loud. It antagonizes your customers and points to a company that is out of touch with the mobile reality.
The HTC Hero, available in the US from Sprint, is less than a year old but that doesn’t mean HTC can’t up the ante. The Legend, a 3G GSM phone not currently available, has a slightly faster processor and a few interesting – and telling – details that are worth a second look.
First, the processor has jumped from 528 MHz to 600, a bump that puts it on par with the Palm Pre in terms of speed. The screen is AMOLED, a brighter, more vibrant display technology and the Legend has an optical trackpad rather than a small ball.
The Legend is a strong upgrade to HTC’s Sense UI series of phones and presumably all of the social media functions, including Facebook and Twitter contact integration, will be present here. If history is any guide, expect this phone to reach us later this year, probably mid-summer, if it visits us at all.
Even as Windows Mobile 7 is set to wow us, more and more manufacturers are heading towards Android. Case in point: the Acer Liquid e. This 786MHz Snapdragon device is as bog standard as they come with GPS, WiFi, and HSDAP support. It also runs Android 2.1 and should be nice and fast. It has a 3.5-inch display and looks like a Zune mated with an N1.
The saddest thing about Android? Now every Android phone will basically be a meh-too launch. Android is the new feature phone. No availability or price, but apparently the name “Liquid e” is actually a date rape drug. Fancy!
Acer Liquid e
Socialize in high definition
Barcelona, 15-18 february 2010 – Acer is proud to present Liquid e, the new version of the already well known Liquid smartphone.
Acer Liquid e features the latest Android™ 2.1 Operating System (aka Éclair). Building on the processing and graphical capabilities of the Qualcomm™ Snapdragon™ and its high definition screen, Liquid e is the state-of-the-art for multimedia, web browsing, and social media integration. It should thrill both avid users of internet on-the-go and new users eager to experience the rich possibilities offered by this innovative device.
This appealing high definition smartphone is the ideal solution for users demanding the best from their devices and in particular for high-definition video playback or streaming, gaming and browsing smoothly rich-content internet sites.
What’s new on Liquid e with Android Éclair 2.1:
• Home screens – The new version now handles five home screens by default, allowing users to easily install more applications from the rich selection available on the Android Market, as well as shortcuts and widgets;
• Quick Contacts – a feature that lets users easily switch between the address book and the social network applications;
• Live wallpapers to customize your Liquid e on the fly;
• A new keyboard layout with an extended dictionary for predictive input;
• An updated version of the Android browser, supporting HTML5, double-tap zooming, video tagging support and geo-location API support.
Remember when people were all excited about Microsoft’s weird tablet stuff? And the phone they were supposed to make? Well, it seems the FCC has released images of an upcoming “Turtle” phone, the PB10ZU.
It runs on CDMA and has Bluetooth and WiFi. Sharp, who cut their teeth building the Sidekick way back when, should release the phone in March, probably with direct Microsoft involvement. Is this Microsoft’s Avatar moment, the company made flesh?
Been waiting to upgrade your iPhone? Can’t because it’s unlocked? Well, wait no longer. Sherif Hashim, an iPhone hacker, has discovered an exploit that seems to unlock the latest baseband. Not a lot of other information other than now the exploit is in the Dev Team’s hands and they will, like some creaky Soviet politburo, release the unlock to the masses.
NB. This will unlock the iPhone for use on T-Mobile and foreign GSM networks. This does not mean you’ll be able to use it on Sprint or Verizon, so don’t ask.
In Greek tragedy, the flaw of hubris was the decisive plot point that brought down many great men. Palm, then, is the Oedipus of a modern tragedy, their efforts to rebuild hampered by a failure to see past their own greatness and a refusal to enter the market on the market’s terms.
Dwight “The Houston Tiger” Silverman, like so many tech dudes, likes the Palm Pre and Pixi and, in a way, doesn’t understand why Palm is on the rocks. However, he got an 
