Underdog, Palm, Showcases Innovation at CES
Palm who?
That’s a question that’s been asked time and time again. For awhile many of us have been saying “this is the year that Palm will close down,” yet year after year, somehow, they stay afloat. Palm is not necessarily the first name you think of when you think if innovation. In the past they’ve been known to put out some quality products, and die hard fans are loyal to them without question, but competition in today’s world has drastically changed. No longer the leader in PDA’s and smartphones, Palm had to drastically change things up when their market share started to slip. They never quite made it back to the top of the mountain, and even their most recent big release, the Palm Pre has fallen into the shadows of obscurity. An iPhone killer it was not.
Nevertheless, Palm has once again appeared at CES and just when you thought they were done, they make announcements that truly raised this geek’s eyebrows. Their new phones, to be released on the Verizon network, will offer capabilities that currently no phone offers. Once again leading the charge in user interface and interactions with the technology, Palm has announced that both their Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will be WebOS-based handsets that will act as mobile hotspots. Essentially these phones using the Verizon network will act as mobile hotspots allowing connectivity of up to five devices. The concept is very similar to a Verizon product called the MiFi 2200, which offers the same functionality. The idea of using your phone to tether is not new, but the extent of which these two phones allows is.
A couple of other new features will be the ability to record and edit video straight on your phone, as well as upload to your favorite video sites to share with your network. New partnerships with game developers will put games like the Sims 3 and Need for Speed Underground on the systems adding to their library of apps. The incentives they also announced for developers for most downloaded and most sold apps, both free and pad, opens up the field for developers to create quality content for the platform.
Palm is definitely not going down without a fight. I look at Palm and I’m reminded of a similar scenario in the video game industry when Sega was on it’s last legs. The company didn’t go down without a fight, but ultimately the competition proved too great and the iconic company pulled from the hardware market and remained in the software development industry. Will something similar happen to Palm, is the software it creates good enough to endure when it has to pull away from the hardware market? Only time will tell.
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