tx.jpegAs we all know Palm has been sold to HP. Normally I would not consider this a TeleRead subject, but I’m quite a Palm fan and have been since their earliest days. As a matter of fact I still write for the oldest Palm blog on the net PalmAddict.

As we see the passing of Palm, I have been following all the articles I can on the subject – after all I knew, and wrote about, most of the major Palm players before the Apple crew moved in (Ed Colligan never did get it when I told him he could give the Palm TX new life by promoting it as an ebook reader)- and the best article I’ve seen is one just published in SF Gate, the San Francisco Chronicle website, by Dan Frommer. His 10 reasons are, and I agree with all of them:

Palm gave Sprint too long of an exclusive
Palm never gave anyone a reason to buy the Pre instead of an iPhone, etc.
The Pre just wasn’t that good
Palm’s advertising was terrible
Palm didn’t let developers make WebOs apps until it was too late
The Pixi was a lame follow-up
Palm didn’t have the equivalent of the iPod Touch
Palm screwed up the way the Pre syncs with computers
Palm investor Bono promoted competitors
Palm’s investors made ridiculous statements that damaged its credibility

Bye, bye Palm. All gone now. I’ll remember you fondly and thanks for a number of good meals at press events.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Don’t go waving goodbye yet. HP is going to force all of us to listen to them go on and on how the new “Palm Tablet” will kill the iPad. While failing to mention that overly pubicized debacle they just pulled with Microsoft.

    blah blah blah 2010 the summer Apple reshaped and defined mobile computing as we know it.

  2. Actually, Palm stumbled long before any of those points. They lost a huge amount of market share in the pre-Treo days when they consistently failed to get a wi-fi-enabled, internet-capable Palm Pilot out. People deserted them in droves. And once those people invested in other tech (Win Mobile and Blackberry), they had no good reason to go back to Palm.

  3. Palm lost it when they lost control of the PalmOS. They had a superior UI but once it was licensed to everyone, who put out better hardware (Tapwave, Sony, Handspring), they never had a chance.

    I started ereading on a Sony CLIE and use many Palm OS devices bUt I didn’t want to be using 4 year old softare on 2 year old hardware (TX and Treo) forever.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.