The second major issue with Palm was one they never, ever came close to figuring out: hardware. Let's start with aesthetics. As many reasons as I have for not wanting an iPhone, the physical phone itself isn't one of them. Apple has always has a very clean, very modern, minimalist design in their products, and the iPhone doesn't disappoint. HTC has been putting in work for years, combining soft touch plastics, brushed aluminum, and various flourishes to make highly attractive phones no matter what carrier or OS. Samsung has done big things with its Galaxy lineup. What did Palm do? They went with a small, plastic, pebble shaped phone. It had the minimalist thing going for it, true. But with the hard, glossy plastic it never felt substantial, premium, when you held it. It would never win many votes in a beauty pagent.
But it was more than the looks. The hardware specs were also an issue. The processor and screen size were fine in January 2009 at CES. By the time it dropped in the summer, other phones were surpassing those specs offering bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. This wouldn't have been a problem if the hardware was upgraded, as most every other company does. HTC seems to have a new or remixed phone every 3 weeks, with specs that either keep up with the latest trends in technology or push them farther (like they did with the EVO 4G). Apple upgrades their phone on a yearly basis, with a huge event to mark the occasion. Motorola, which rode the RAZR popularity entirely too long and nearly took themselves out of the smartphone game, had cranked out some quality pieces of hardware.
Heck, even RIM has managed to tweak their crackberry to keep business and social types happy. What did Palm do? Well, depends on your carrier. If you were on Verizon or AT&T, you got a crack at the Pre Plus. The big changes between it and the original Pre on Sprint? More internal RAM and the removal of the physical button in the gesture area. That's all. No screen size or resolution increases, no processor bump, no change of form factor, not even a special edition color. In February 2011 Verizon did release the oft delayed Pre 2, which finally brought a faster 1mhz processor and WebOS 2.0, which brought out some enhancements, but no other changes to speak of. Now, for die hard Palm fans or lovers of WebOS, the change was notable, even if the hardware changes were nowhere near the upgrade they had rallied for. But for the average person coming into Verizon for a phone, the Pre2 never stood a chance.
First off, Verizon store employees did a horrible job in promoting the phone in store. When the Plus dropped, there were stories of some stores steering people away from the Pre to one of their Android offerings. Verizon had decided that, without the all conquering iPhone, it stood a better chance getting customers by pushing their 'Droid' lineup of phones by Motorola and HTC. At that point, WebOS was still a more polished offering than whichever of the multiple flavors of Android that were out. But on the same looking, same spec hardware, and with employees that weren't exactly encouraged to push it, the Pre Plus was barely noticed. By time the Pre2 hit, Big Red was offering a glut of 4 inch, super fast Android phones and a little thing called the iPhone 4, which finally came to the network. There was no way a phone that had physically changed very little in 2 years would stand a chance getting noticed, even if Verizon gave them away for free.
But what about Sprint? Their customers (like myself) were the first to buy into Palm's new OS, and often were the most vocal and loyal bunch of WebOS users. Surely they would have enjoyed some new hardware. Nope. Sprint, feeling it got burned by Palm when the Pre failed to meet sales expectation, decided not to carry any further iteration of the Pre. Sprint users were never offered the Pre Plus, instead having to deal with the annoying 'too many cards' memory leak.
The Pre2? Not a chance. The thing is, WebOS users, like myself, would have snapped them up without thinking if Sprint offered them, even with the plethora of Android offerings, simply because the OS was great. To make matters worse, the aforementioned WebOS 2.0, which was promised to all Palm Pre owners, never made it to owners of the Sprint Palm Pre. Lack of memory and processor speed meant the OS would not run properly, further insulating those loyal customers.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other offering Palm had: the Pixi. In an effort to win back the few hundred people still holding on to their Centros, Palm released what was essentially a smaller Pre with a slower processor and, depending on your carrier, lack of WiFi.
True, WebOS was coded in a way that the vast majority of programs written for it would scale down to work on the lesser hardware with no problem showing the versatility of the software. But most people didn't want a smaller, slower phone than what they had. Why Palm gave Pre users, especially those on Sprint, a way to downgrade, but absolutely no way to upgrade is beyond me. And the name. Pixi. What grown person is going to buy any product with a name like Pixi?
Now, many thought the issue with the lack of new hardware was Palm's relative lack of funding. And to a point, that could be argued. They simply didn't have the funds to R&D new product like any of the larger manufacturers. So when it was announced that HP was buying them for a few billion, many thought it could work. I mean, this is HP. They have TONS of cash from pushing desktops, laptops, and printers for years.
Money should have been no problem. All the planned product that had been hinted at and whispered about could now be put out to the public, and WebOS could be seen for the great OS it is. Right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
While the HP and Palm guys promised a slew of new products in the coming months, only 3 were confirmed: a tablet, which thanks to the iPad was all the rage, and 2 new phones.
First was the Veer (the one on the left), a 2.6 inch slider phone that was SMALLER than even the Pixi and sporting WebOS 2.0. HP tryed to hype the phone the best it could. Palm guru John Rubenstein actually started using it as his main phone (although I'm not sure how many other business execs would be squinting at that tiny screen or trying to tap out e-mails in the boardroom with that). AT&T released the phone in May 2011. Nobody cared. It seems that nobody was really that interested in a slider phone the size of an egg (and looked like an egg if you ordered the Veer in white). Considering most every other phone in the market were going for BIGGER screens, and most Palm fans had been begging for a bigger, better phone, not releasing the Pre 3 had to be one of the dumbest decisions HP could have made.
So after crapping the bed with that phone decision, HP decided to put their full might on the HP Touchpad. With the iPad setting the stage, everybody was trying to get a piece of the tablet pie, fielding tablets to compete against the all conquering Apple slab. This time, HP figured they had a shot. With WebOS 3.0 running on some decent hardware (1.2 Ghz Snapdragon with 1Gb RAM), it had the muscle to fight with the Galaxy Tab and iPad 2. WebOs was still a slicker, more refined interface than Honeycomb (which was almost a stop-gap OS designed for tablets but never really got traction) and was ready to show the world just what was possible on more capable hardware. A big ad campain was run, dedicated space was set up in Best Buy and Staples to set it apart from the other tablets and special training was given to salespeople so they know the benefits of the Touchpad and why someone would want one over that pesky iPad. So how did it fare?
Bad. Very, very bad. First, the reviews weren't exactly kind to it. Where most tablets in it's price range went with some sort of soft touch or aluminum casing, the Touchpad looked...like a supersized Pre. Same hard touch, shiny plastic, same rounded pebble look. It's one thing to keep the family resemblence going, but when nobody is really impressed by it, it's going to be hard to get people to give you much of a look. Once you got past the looks, there was the performance. Even with a competetive processor, the tablet often felt sluggish when doing web browsing and other tasks. This was fixed by subsequent OTA updates (one of which went out not long after the Touchpad hit the shelves), but it would seem that for a product that had been in development for so long, these issues should have been sorted out. Couple that with the dirth of apps (which I'll get to in anothe entry) and the fact that it sold for the same price as the Tab and iPad, and it was a very, VERY hard sell for a company that simply had to make this work if WebOS had any chance of survival in a world where Apple was still king in mind share and Android was taking the lead in market share. In August, less than 2 months after the Touchpad went on sale, HP announced it that it would discontinue all current hardware devices running WebOS. The remaining stock of Touchpads would be sold off at ridiculous discount. How ridiculous? At launch, a 16GB Touchpad went for $499. During the fire sale that followed HP's discontinuation, you could have that same touchpad for the low low price of $99. The Touchpads then sold like hotcakes. In a bit of irony, HP now had the second most popular tablet on the market, and they weren't even making them anymore.
With the death of all WebOS hardware, the Pre3 was dead before it even had a chance. Any hope of a competetive (or any, at this point) phone running an OS other than Android or iOS with true multitasking was over. Just to add salt in the wound of the Palm faithful, a few websites managed to get a hold of one of the few Pre3 phones that actually made it out into the wild. The reviews were pretty much what most people thought: The best Palm phone yet, but looks too similar to every other Pre and just not enough there to sway most people to buy it over a similar Android or Apple product, even if the OS rocks. Sprint could easily have sold them to every Pre owner they still had with no problem. But that would never happen now.
As depressing as this was, there was still one more reason the Pre and WebOS failed.
Pretty easy choice for millions of people...
And to think, this is the same company that makes Nextel phones...
Heck, even RIM has managed to tweak their crackberry to keep business and social types happy. What did Palm do? Well, depends on your carrier. If you were on Verizon or AT&T, you got a crack at the Pre Plus. The big changes between it and the original Pre on Sprint? More internal RAM and the removal of the physical button in the gesture area. That's all. No screen size or resolution increases, no processor bump, no change of form factor, not even a special edition color. In February 2011 Verizon did release the oft delayed Pre 2, which finally brought a faster 1mhz processor and WebOS 2.0, which brought out some enhancements, but no other changes to speak of. Now, for die hard Palm fans or lovers of WebOS, the change was notable, even if the hardware changes were nowhere near the upgrade they had rallied for. But for the average person coming into Verizon for a phone, the Pre2 never stood a chance.
It's all new! Really, it is! What, it doesn't look new?
First off, Verizon store employees did a horrible job in promoting the phone in store. When the Plus dropped, there were stories of some stores steering people away from the Pre to one of their Android offerings. Verizon had decided that, without the all conquering iPhone, it stood a better chance getting customers by pushing their 'Droid' lineup of phones by Motorola and HTC. At that point, WebOS was still a more polished offering than whichever of the multiple flavors of Android that were out. But on the same looking, same spec hardware, and with employees that weren't exactly encouraged to push it, the Pre Plus was barely noticed. By time the Pre2 hit, Big Red was offering a glut of 4 inch, super fast Android phones and a little thing called the iPhone 4, which finally came to the network. There was no way a phone that had physically changed very little in 2 years would stand a chance getting noticed, even if Verizon gave them away for free.
But what about Sprint? Their customers (like myself) were the first to buy into Palm's new OS, and often were the most vocal and loyal bunch of WebOS users. Surely they would have enjoyed some new hardware. Nope. Sprint, feeling it got burned by Palm when the Pre failed to meet sales expectation, decided not to carry any further iteration of the Pre. Sprint users were never offered the Pre Plus, instead having to deal with the annoying 'too many cards' memory leak.
There was PLENTY of this to go around for Sprint customers...
The Pre2? Not a chance. The thing is, WebOS users, like myself, would have snapped them up without thinking if Sprint offered them, even with the plethora of Android offerings, simply because the OS was great. To make matters worse, the aforementioned WebOS 2.0, which was promised to all Palm Pre owners, never made it to owners of the Sprint Palm Pre. Lack of memory and processor speed meant the OS would not run properly, further insulating those loyal customers.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other offering Palm had: the Pixi. In an effort to win back the few hundred people still holding on to their Centros, Palm released what was essentially a smaller Pre with a slower processor and, depending on your carrier, lack of WiFi.
Somebody had to think this would sell. Not sure who...
True, WebOS was coded in a way that the vast majority of programs written for it would scale down to work on the lesser hardware with no problem showing the versatility of the software. But most people didn't want a smaller, slower phone than what they had. Why Palm gave Pre users, especially those on Sprint, a way to downgrade, but absolutely no way to upgrade is beyond me. And the name. Pixi. What grown person is going to buy any product with a name like Pixi?
Now, many thought the issue with the lack of new hardware was Palm's relative lack of funding. And to a point, that could be argued. They simply didn't have the funds to R&D new product like any of the larger manufacturers. So when it was announced that HP was buying them for a few billion, many thought it could work. I mean, this is HP. They have TONS of cash from pushing desktops, laptops, and printers for years.
Every office known to man had to fight with one of these....
Money should have been no problem. All the planned product that had been hinted at and whispered about could now be put out to the public, and WebOS could be seen for the great OS it is. Right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
While the HP and Palm guys promised a slew of new products in the coming months, only 3 were confirmed: a tablet, which thanks to the iPad was all the rage, and 2 new phones.
Yes, those are two BRAND NEW phones. We've gone over this before...
First was the Veer (the one on the left), a 2.6 inch slider phone that was SMALLER than even the Pixi and sporting WebOS 2.0. HP tryed to hype the phone the best it could. Palm guru John Rubenstein actually started using it as his main phone (although I'm not sure how many other business execs would be squinting at that tiny screen or trying to tap out e-mails in the boardroom with that). AT&T released the phone in May 2011. Nobody cared. It seems that nobody was really that interested in a slider phone the size of an egg (and looked like an egg if you ordered the Veer in white). Considering most every other phone in the market were going for BIGGER screens, and most Palm fans had been begging for a bigger, better phone, not releasing the Pre 3 had to be one of the dumbest decisions HP could have made.
But...but.. iCarley thinks its sooooooooo cute!
So after crapping the bed with that phone decision, HP decided to put their full might on the HP Touchpad. With the iPad setting the stage, everybody was trying to get a piece of the tablet pie, fielding tablets to compete against the all conquering Apple slab. This time, HP figured they had a shot. With WebOS 3.0 running on some decent hardware (1.2 Ghz Snapdragon with 1Gb RAM), it had the muscle to fight with the Galaxy Tab and iPad 2. WebOs was still a slicker, more refined interface than Honeycomb (which was almost a stop-gap OS designed for tablets but never really got traction) and was ready to show the world just what was possible on more capable hardware. A big ad campain was run, dedicated space was set up in Best Buy and Staples to set it apart from the other tablets and special training was given to salespeople so they know the benefits of the Touchpad and why someone would want one over that pesky iPad. So how did it fare?
Put it like this: Harry couldn't even save them...
Bad. Very, very bad. First, the reviews weren't exactly kind to it. Where most tablets in it's price range went with some sort of soft touch or aluminum casing, the Touchpad looked...like a supersized Pre. Same hard touch, shiny plastic, same rounded pebble look. It's one thing to keep the family resemblence going, but when nobody is really impressed by it, it's going to be hard to get people to give you much of a look. Once you got past the looks, there was the performance. Even with a competetive processor, the tablet often felt sluggish when doing web browsing and other tasks. This was fixed by subsequent OTA updates (one of which went out not long after the Touchpad hit the shelves), but it would seem that for a product that had been in development for so long, these issues should have been sorted out. Couple that with the dirth of apps (which I'll get to in anothe entry) and the fact that it sold for the same price as the Tab and iPad, and it was a very, VERY hard sell for a company that simply had to make this work if WebOS had any chance of survival in a world where Apple was still king in mind share and Android was taking the lead in market share. In August, less than 2 months after the Touchpad went on sale, HP announced it that it would discontinue all current hardware devices running WebOS. The remaining stock of Touchpads would be sold off at ridiculous discount. How ridiculous? At launch, a 16GB Touchpad went for $499. During the fire sale that followed HP's discontinuation, you could have that same touchpad for the low low price of $99. The Touchpads then sold like hotcakes. In a bit of irony, HP now had the second most popular tablet on the market, and they weren't even making them anymore.
Who wants orphaned tech? WE DO!!!
With the death of all WebOS hardware, the Pre3 was dead before it even had a chance. Any hope of a competetive (or any, at this point) phone running an OS other than Android or iOS with true multitasking was over. Just to add salt in the wound of the Palm faithful, a few websites managed to get a hold of one of the few Pre3 phones that actually made it out into the wild. The reviews were pretty much what most people thought: The best Palm phone yet, but looks too similar to every other Pre and just not enough there to sway most people to buy it over a similar Android or Apple product, even if the OS rocks. Sprint could easily have sold them to every Pre owner they still had with no problem. But that would never happen now.
As depressing as this was, there was still one more reason the Pre and WebOS failed.
