Apple’s Secret Plan to Top Palm - My Editorial
I think I have figured out Apple’s secret plan to topple Palm. It is really simple once you look at all the facts. In order for Apple to succeed they needed to get Palm to do certain things.
- Get them to delay updating their OS for several years while you create ipods and itunes.
- Have Palm end partnerships with hardware manufacturers like Garmin, Symbol, and Sony
- Kill off their handhelds like the Lifedrive and make sure the TX does not get updated.
- Also since they are not primarily a hardware company get Palm to sell their OS and pay to buy it back but without being able to make updates to the Desktop Application (unlike itunes)
- Create faulty Treo handhelds like the 755p and make promises to update it that they don’t keep.
- When they do keep the promise to update it make sure the update is faulty and available for some carriers.
- Also discontinue that hardware line before the right update is released.
- Close down Palmgear which is almost like an itunes for Palm Software and have it share space with windows products on Pocketgear while you build up your web apps and prepare your SDK for Feburary 2008.
- Announce a new product in a new product category at All Things D and then decide not to release it so Asus and other companies can get Market Share with a similar product.
- Delay Palm Desktop compatibility with Vista till early 2008.
- Have the founder of the company sell of shares off his own company stock undermining investor confidence.
- Make Palm conduct layoffs.
- Delay a new product that was going to come out before Xmas, don’t tell anyone what it is, and lose the potential profit you could have made.
- Make Palm close most of it’s retail stores while you open up new ones.
- This is really difficult, but have them delay new product introduction for at least one year especially to give you lead time to have developers create plentiful new apps for the iphone/itouch before they even introduce your product.
- Get them to hire your former employees you are not interested in retaining to act on ideas you were not interested in anyway.
- Narrowly escape your CEO being named worst CEO of 2007.
- And last but not least find a way to make Palm do this all by themselves so you can strictly focus on innovating and building on your current success and not spending time to get them to do all this.
I may not have included all the particulars and if you see any I missed feel free to add them in the comments. Given that it will be a year (according to Palm) that Palm OS Too Long comes out I am sure Apple is thinking of other things it will get Palm to do without actually doing anything to get Palm to do it to themselves. Like I said we have a year. Customers, accessory makers, developers, bloggers, etc. Let’s make the best of it and try not to write about the iphone. . . if you can help it. I’m sure there is enough stuff to rehash in the coming year. It may seem ironic I would write something like this on a Palm blog but I am pretty certain that I am not the only Palm Enthusiast had some passionate thoughts and feelings about the list of facts I’ve laid out. It is precisely because I care so much that I bring to light the truth that is out there. :-).
January 27th, 2008 at 8:15 am
You forget “get them to dump their home-built, popular OS for WindowsCE, which works completely differently from PalmOS [or whatever it's called now]…
January 27th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I was a Palm enthusiast until I bought a Tungsten C. Now I am so damn pissed (still) that I am just waiting for Palm shut down. They really make a bunch of crap products now. Imagine where they’d be now if they had not bought Handspring or whatever company that was that ACTUALLY developed the Treo. When you consider that Palm proper didn’t even do that, they haven’t made any sort of decent product in about 5 years.