Oh dear it seems to go from bad to worse. It seems Palm is in quite a lot of bother. Over the past 8 months they have got nothing but bad press. They cancelled the Foleo (I guess they realised it was erm…. not going to sell), they got a dressing down from Engadget in an open letter and now they have said their new operating system will be at least another 18 months in development. I have always been a palm fan (for my palm device history search for “The end of the palm OS” in the search box on the left). Actually I am writing this on a palm Treo 750v. It’s a WM6 device though, not a Palm OS one. It’s not that I don’t like the Palm OS it’s just I have used WM devices for a number of years now and I am used to them. Also this was available on Vodafone in the UK so I could get it for free. If they had the 755 (the palm version) instead then I would have got that. Anyway I digress. Palm have been losing ground rapidly over the past years and even though a Private Equity firm run by U2’s Bono no less have stepped in to give the company a much needed boost we have seen little from them. Delaying the OS this much in my opinion is a risk, a big risk. It means that devices in the time period will either be utilising the old Palm OS which everyone agrees is a little outdated or WM which, will of course, pull the WM fans but they risk losing the Palm OS fans to other devices. As far as I can see if it’s going to be 18 months then Palm need to release a Fantastic device that blows the socks off the competition and use the current palm OS (and make it upgradeable to the new OS). That should keep peoples radar trained on Palm. If they don’t then they will have a steep hill to climb to get back into the market.
What’s your view
A