WebOS is actually really cool, but Palm really pooched it with the marketing.
It's been put on a whole 2 devices, so saturation is minimal.
It hasn't been marketed to the world hardly at all, outside of a couple of carrier shorts.
They haven't done much at all to support a developer community (they should have been flogging SDK availability to the public long before the first devices emerged).
It's ugly and that is why it failed. There is nothing about either of those phones that say's touch me. There was plenty of hype about the Pre when it launched, but from day one it didn't sell well because, outside of the geek community, no one wanted to pick it up and hold it.
The best thing palm could do is to have another company redesign the outer casing and change up the color scheme on the os. It would then sell like hotcakes. Palm wouldn't be able to catch andriod or apple but they could steal plenty of market share from Blackberry.
Palm still has a few options but but the window to do anything is closing quickly.
Personally, I believe that the Pre is one of the most sleek-looking smartphones on the market. Glossy, black and seamless, it has the air of a high-tech, space age gizmo, like some sort of mysterious monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The real failure of the Pre, however, is in early missteps with developer support (which irritated the nerds), underwhelming hardware (relative to other flagship phones) and HORRIBLE ADVERTISING. IIRC, not one ad demonstrated the convenience of webOS (which is very intuitive).
Style is subjective, but for me it has all the appeal of a Playschool toy painted black. I think your comparison of the Pre to something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey is spot on. It was outdated looking from the get-go.
There was plenty of buzz and it did have a good launch, just sales never took off because it didn't have mass appeal. Why would they waste money on something that the public at large were not interested in? I think all this talk about advertising and developer support are just excuses thrown out there to shift blame from the fact they made a very competent flop.
When I first saw it I said it looked like a black maxipad and that all it would do is keep palm around. I guess I was a little too optimistic about that. Palm could still turn it around. I just think there leadership needs to be changed.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
Comments
It's been put on a whole 2 devices, so saturation is minimal.
It hasn't been marketed to the world hardly at all, outside of a couple of carrier shorts.
They haven't done much at all to support a developer community (they should have been flogging SDK availability to the public long before the first devices emerged).
The best thing palm could do is to have another company redesign the outer casing and change up the color scheme on the os. It would then sell like hotcakes. Palm wouldn't be able to catch andriod or apple but they could steal plenty of market share from Blackberry.
Palm still has a few options but but the window to do anything is closing quickly.
The real failure of the Pre, however, is in early missteps with developer support (which irritated the nerds), underwhelming hardware (relative to other flagship phones) and HORRIBLE ADVERTISING. IIRC, not one ad demonstrated the convenience of webOS (which is very intuitive).
There was plenty of buzz and it did have a good launch, just sales never took off because it didn't have mass appeal. Why would they waste money on something that the public at large were not interested in? I think all this talk about advertising and developer support are just excuses thrown out there to shift blame from the fact they made a very competent flop.
When I first saw it I said it looked like a black maxipad and that all it would do is keep palm around. I guess I was a little too optimistic about that. Palm could still turn it around. I just think there leadership needs to be changed.