Palm’s efforts to level the smart phone playing field against Apple have been very risky moves that will probably result in the inevitable customer base revolt.
They’ve proven beyond reasonable doubt that they don’t understand the consumer point of view by focusing solely on buzz words and competitive marketing campaigns instead of the user experience.
This methodology was highlighted in one of their TV spots, which touted the Pre’s ability to run multiple applications at once as its most important feature. If you’re Joe Sprint Customer, do you really care that your smart phone knows how to multitask? No. Do you even know what multitasking means? No. You want your phone to be fast and you want it to just work.
Now, EXHIBIT B. Today’s news that a new Pre firmware update has re-enabled iTunes syncing via an exploit that masks the Pre as an iPod.
Let’s simplify the past few months:
June 6th:
Palm Pre released, with the ability to sync to iTunesJuly 15th:
Apple updates iTunes, removing the ability for the Pre to syncJuly 24th:
Palm updates the Pre’s firmware, re-enabling iTunes syncingLet’s go back to Joe Sprint Customer. All he knows is he has a smart phone and it’s pretty good. He liked it when he could sync his music in iTunes, but suddenly it just stopped working without explanation. Now, it’s working again.
Is that the kind of confusion that maximizes revenue? No matter who wins this silly territory battle, the customer loses.
Software is easy, if it was difficult it would be called hardware.
July 25, 2009
Oh Palm
