Palm’s webOS strategy flaw: ignoring current customer-base
Update: (May-2-09) Since I wrote this piece, it seems that the Palm OS folks have changed their minds, recognizing that ignoring the current customer-base was a mistake. The Palm Pre will come with a PalmOS Emulator that will “let the phone UI look and act like the Garnet OS, and even has virtual, on screen buttons to give you full functionality“. Good, smart move!
The new Palm Pre is a step on the right direction for the company. From the H/W to the UI to the app store, to the approach to application development which is based on web technologies. I’m glad to see Palm re-inventing themselves.
That said, who or what kind of customers more likely will move to the Palm Pre/webOS? My bet is that at first it would be existing Palm customers (in the U.S. lots of these are enterprise customers) which typically are pretty loyal customers.
That is where the Palm (Product) folks dropped the ball, as they have failed to provide a transition path to convert their existing customer-base to the new Palm Pre webOS platform; see New Palm Pre won’t work with old apps (ComputerWorld).
Perhaps this is an opportunity for a 3rd party to develop such solution, or maybe Palm just ran out of time for CES and is working on such emulation, but the PMs at Palm must recognize the strategy of not providing a good a path for existing Palm users as a flawed strategy that is going to cost them…
…existing Palm customer-base must be able to seamlessly run the existing inventory legacy applications and data on the new WebOS via some kind of emulation.
ceo
Palm could certainly make it easier for me to go back to Palm (from Windows Mobile) rather than switching to Android.
I’m not sure I agree, sometimes it takes big steps for a company to get back on track. Palm is last in the race and they were steadily losing… this is the type of gamble that could pay off significantly. Especially with all of the iPhone and Blackberry Storm users who are dissatisfied with the quality of the device and operating system they have.
@Douglas:
But exactly the reason they are late and competition is why they must ride the wave of existing customer-base. the need to move away from garnet and into webOS fully, and convert existing customer-base in the process.
ceo
I am torn. The hacker and Palm enthusiast in me is continously angry at companies like Palm who abandon their users by breaking old technologies. Google “Palm Universal Connector” for an example of Palm’s history.
However, a well-understood aspect of innovation is that if you only have a small portion of the market, you don’t need to maintain backward compatibility. Palm used to try and be more like Microsoft. Now they are becoming more like Apple.
Read more about the difference between these two philosophies in The People of the Fruit.. Substitute “old Palm” and “new Palm” where needed.
Unlike some others, I don’t have a big investment in legacy PalmOS software. But I have a *HUGE* investment in the DATA I’ve accumulated in the near ten years I’ve used classic PalmOS. How huge? I have over 2,700 Memos on my LifeDrive. That’s how huge. And since these are PalmOS 5 Memos, they are larger than the original dinky ones. Where in the existing Pre demo model software can I place *those*? In that wee sticky-note like thing Palm demoed? This is another aspect Palm needs to consider.
I rather wonder, if JS and XHTML is enough to build good mobile applications?
Apple tried this it in the beginning, too, and changed their position (with a huge success considering the download facts of the appstore).
but in the appstore you download objective c and cocoa applications
and more and more applications are migrated from mobile web to rich clients from my point of view.
oliver
@mobinauten:
Yes, JS and XHTML and CSS is enought to build good mobile connected applications. To be determined if it will perform good enough or be friendly enough for gaming.
Note that Apple hasn’t changed its position: it was all planned. They support great web experience and great local apps experience.
You are right on the web vs. local apps on iPhone — it all has to do with richness.
Lets see what will be possible, richness-wise, on Palm Pre, but I believe they are up to something…
ceo
@Mike Cane: agree, apps *and* data, both, must be part of the migration path.
Update: Since I wrote this piece, it seems that the Palm OS folks have changed their minds, recognizing that ignoring the current customer-base was a mistake. The Palm Pre will come with a PalmOS Emulator that will “let the phone UI look and act like the Garnet OS, and even has virtual, on screen buttons to give you full functionality“. Good, smart move!