At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the Palm Pre with it’s WebOS was all the rage. I remember because I there. Everyone called it the ‘iPhone killer’. At the time it might have been a real competitor but Palm took too long to bring it’s innovative operation system to market.
By the time Palm brought out the phone, Apple had already incorporated most of the features that made the Palm WebOS stand apart into the iPhone via updates. HTC also helped displace the demand for Palm with it’s Sense UI and great Android designed phones.
Palm has really gone down hill since then. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has since paid $1.2 billion for the company. That amount may sound like a lot but it is pocket change for a company as big as HP. To add insult to injury HP CEO Mark Hurd has gone on record saying HP is not going to use the WebOS to enter the very lucrative smartphone market. That is very surprising since that is what everyone, myself included thought was going to happen. What was once a great phone and platform will be reduced to at best a tablet and at worst web-connected printers.
With the death of Palm Apple iPhone remains alone as king of the hill in the smartphone world. Blackberry in the words of Avatar ‘I see you’ but until you take the non business users into mind with a more innovative & user friendly OS, you’re on time out. Only Android poses a real challenge. It has great phones although it still has a long way to go due to the amount of apps in it’s Market not it’s technology. Note to Microsoft: Palm failed for many reasons but all can agree it’s lack of apps was a main one.