USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010808.1542 (On Screen): The CEO of Palm has conceded that Palm hasn't been aggressive enough. But he's wrong about what mistake they've made. He thinks they should have been more aggressive in selling to large corporations. Actually, they should have been more aggressive in product design. In a market which thrives on novelty and gee-whiz, Palm has sat nearly still in terms of product features for two years -- and is now wondering why it is that Compaq is eating their lunch. Palm only released a model with a color display this year, and they're only now beginning the slow process of switching to the ARM, which can provide much more compute power than the DragonBall processor they're currently using.

Palm has unquestionably suffered a failure in marketing. But it isn't a failure in targeted sales; it's a failure in overall market assessment and planning. Palm has lost the Red Queen's race. (discuss)

Update: The situation now is that Compaq holds the high ground, because it's iPaq is more expensive but also far more powerful. Palm is defending from below; it's only advantage is price. But Compaq can use a number of well-understood processes to bring their price down (not least of which is economy of scale as volume picks up), whereas Palm has a tough job to catch up in features. And it's not like Palm had no warning that this was coming, since Microsoft has been gunning for them with various versions of WinCE for three years.

Update: Of course, the last thing that Palm needs is absurd lawsuits.