Well, the conference has come and gone, and I'm left with mixed emotions. I could probably write pages for each of the things that make me excited as well as the things that worry me. However, I only have so much time and space, so I figured that I should give a quick recap of what I'm currently thinking. In typical "tech-writing" fashion, I thought that it would be best to break them into a list of positives and a list of negatives.
Without further adieu, here are the things that make me happy/excited for the beast that is the Palm economy:
- I am glad to see that Palm Inc. will live again under a unified brand. It was always far too confusing to try to explain who "Palm" was to people that don't follow the handheld market.
- I'm happy to see that the Cell phone vendors (Cingular, Sprint, etc.) seem to be actively engaged in the Palm community. The cell phone vendors had representatives all over the conference, and they seemed to be attempting to involve themselves in any way that they could. The phone vendors are essential to the long term survival of Palm. More on that later.
- I am happy to see David Nagel step down. He always seemed a very nice man, but he was never particularly inspiring or dominating. I'm sure that there were sides of him that I never saw. Perhaps they came out behind closed doors; I don't know. What I do know is that as an outside developer, I never felt compelled to follow his vision. In fact, I never was really sure what his vision was. It seemed to change from day to day. First it was OS 5 and ARM processors. Then, it was Cobalt. Now it's Palm OS on Linux. (I have my opinions on what PalmSource needs to do, and I'll talk about those in a minute.) Developers like leaders with vision. David didn't seem to have it.
- The eager gobbling up of the Lifedrive by developers at the conference store. I have a Lifedrive and I like it, but to see the humongous line waiting to purchase one really surprised me. This is exciting to me because developers are traditionally early adopters. If the device gets good reviews from the developers, those good reviews will eventually filter down to Joe-Public, which will in turn drive sales. The hardware sales will then drive software sales as people try to load up all 4 GB of the device. Definitely good for the Palm economy!
Looking back over it, those are definitely some reasons to be excited about the future. However, that being said, there were some things that continue to make me worried about the future. Actually, most of them are things that I didn't hear that make me nervous:
- It was never revealed why David Nagel stepped down. Many news sites speculated on the health of his wife and that the decision was made for personal reasons. This sounds very probably, and I understand the desire to be sympathetic and respectful of David's private life. However, I am sure that investors and developers alike would feel a lot better if someone would give a reason for his departure. I don't need details. Just saying "David stepped down for personal reasons" would suffice. I simply need something to alay my fears of the unknown. As with most people, my own imagination is ofter far worse than anything that actually happens in the business world. Does David know something the rest of us don't?
- It was disconcerting to not have any major new hardware products announced or any new licensees revealed. Sony's absence was definitely felt, and the handful of new devices since last year make it difficult to be excited about the future. There were a few that seemed like they could be exciting such as the Group Sense PDA phones, but without timetables or firm announcements, I remain skeptical. Anyone remember the original Fossil PDA/Watch announcment? Add to that the greatly diminished presence of the Tapwave folks and it really feels like the Palm hardware community will eventually devolove into just Palm Inc. Competition drives innovation so if we do end up with only one hardware vendor, we could see a slow down in hardware innovation. Perhaps the PocketPC and the Symbian presence will continue to drive it, but any diminishing of competition can only hurt in the long run.
- I was very, very disappointed to not see pa1m0ne (now Palm Inc.) come out and confirm or deny the fact that they are working on a Windows Mobile version of the Treo. I'm not sure what to say about this topic that hasn't been said. The only thing I would note is that the market hates uncertainty. Developers hate it too.
- Lastly, I was very, very, very disappointed to not see any announcements of a low cost phone based on the PalmOS. IMHO, this is the key to the future for the Palm market. Do you know why Symbian phones outnumber Palm phones by such a grand margin? It's because you can get them for a penny! Studies have shown continually that the average Joe user doesn't know or even understand the difference between most phones. Therefore, it's human nature that given a choice between two options, the majority of people will choose the cheaper option. If Palm wants to make the kind of numbers that Nokia does, it needs to have more price point options for consumers. Perhaps this is where Palm OS on Linux will take us, but it would have been very encouraging to hear that someone is working on it. In fact, the only thing that was shown was a demo of what appeared to be a very early build of Palm OS on Linux. By all accounts, we still have a long wait in front of us. The longer we wait, the closer Microsoft can get.
Whew! That was more typing than I was planning on doing in one sitting. What do you think? Do you agree? Am I totally off base? As always, I'd love to hear what you think!
-Jon
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