So as I was working on a current event assignment for a class of mine I decided that it would make an excellent first post on my new blog.
The article I chose to discuss is Don Reisinger's article titled "10 Reasons Why Palm Pre May Become the Smartphone Flop of 2009" (http://tinyurl.com/ydlsexj)
Due to limitations on length I could not say everything I wanted to in my school paper so I will use it as a base here and just expand upon it.
The article describes why the author thinks the Palm Pre will be a huge failure and probably the “Smartphone Flop of 2009”. Reisinger states in his article that the Pre is currently priced too high against competing products such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones and that given the choice a customer will choose the iPhone or other mentioned products over the Pre due to better advertising done by the respective companies. The Pre is currently selling for $149.99 whereas the iPhone is selling for $99; according to the author this price difference alone will make up most people’s minds. On top of just a price difference Reisinger says the Apple logo itself will draw in many customers and with Apple app catalog backing the iPhone it is a lot more powerful than the Pre and has better selling points. Reisinger also takes a stab at the Sprint network and says that the Pre will not be able to stay on just Sprint forever; he argues that Sprint is too small of a network and doesn’t have enough subscribers to get the Pre the publicity and appeal to the mainstream consumer.
I believe the writer of this article has many of his facts wrong and may be a bit biased towards Apple. While yes the Apple logo is appealing and it is often seen as a sort of status symbol and almost a benchmark of sorts for all technology the Pre still has a very good chance against the iPhone and other competing products. The writer mentions that the Palm Pre does not have as many apps as the iPhone, or RIM’s Blackberry or Google’s Android, which is true, but the author says there are only a few dozen apps for the Pre; this is partially true but not completely. The Pre is a mobile device based on a Linux Kernel it is extremely open source and developers have root access. If you know how to get into the Linux system of the device there are many homebrew apps you can install as well and many open source hacks that can expand the capabilities of the Pre. Doing these homebrew things is becoming easier and easier by the day people have written programs for the in java which will do everything for you. The whole homebrew community is mostly only temporary anyways until Palm opens up their app catalog submissions a bit more. These tech analysts that shoot down the Pre need to remember it is not going to be a stellar device right off the bat; the Operating system for the device is still on version 1.1.0 (soon to be 1.2.0 or maybe 1.2.1). It will take some time to smooth everything out and get it working correctly but we have seen updates from Palm quite frequently already and they seem to be doing quite well at getting things done.. The iPhone by no means was perfect when it came out and it still is not perfect today. The reason it sold so many devices at launch is because it was an Apple product. Palm is trying to re-launch their image here and by doing so they are, in a way, starting an entirely new company. So being a Pre owner and given the circumstances I think Palm will actually make it through the troubles and the Pre will become a very successful device. Reisinger mentioned that the Sprint network does not reach enough people to make the Pre a successful and popular device. While yes Sprint is a smaller network subscriber wise compared to AT&T they have a much faster and in my opinion more reliable network than AT&T. Also Sprint is more open to things such as Google Voice than AT&T is; AT&T shut down Google Voice for the iPhone very quickly whereas the folks at Sprint and Palm welcomed it with open arms, this makes for happy users, which leads to positive talk, which will eventually lead to more customers for Palm and Sprint. Give it time people.
