It has now been about 7 months since the last time I updated my blog and clearly my focus has been a little unfocused. Its time to refocus!

My hope is to get back to updating this blog on a weekly basis going forward. Always open to blog idea requests. Please feel free to reach out or comment with your ideas.

I thought this quote from the Karate Kid movie was very relevant to the state of this blog. The fact of the matter is I’ve been lagging in blog posts. This is mostly due to my 2 kids whom are both under the age of 2. But also due to my current employment and my fear of being in a situation of conflict of interest.

So, I’ve decided to yet again refocus my blog on leadership, business operations and business strategy. I’ll probably blog very little about mobile telecommunications technology for the time being.

I will start by reposting a couple of business posts from the archives to get the ball rolling and then build on those.

If you’re still paying attention to this blog, I hope you’ll stuck around for this new direction.

Feel free to comment below.

I haven’t updated this blog in a really long time. But in a conversation with a friend today, I remembered it and started to browse through it. I came across an old blog article that talked about the future of SmartPhone applications and how more smarts will be added to the phones. As an example, I used Siri, a virtual personal assistant as an example.

Since then, Siri was purchased by Apple and we have not heard much from them since. You can still download their application on their website although I’m not sure if it’s been updated. However, Siri’s technology is clearly innovative and extremely user friendly. So now it begs the question, will it make a resurgence?

It’s been about a year since the Siri acquisition, and a new iPhone is coming up based on Apple’s regular iPhone release schedule. So one has to wonder if the iPhone 5 (or whatever it’s name will be) will include Siri’s capabilities built-in, hopefully with one year of further innovation.

Let me know your thoughts.

I’ve recently been asked, numerous times, how to add an iCal calendar (ics extension) or CSV calendars to a BlackBerry calendar.  If you’re on an enterprise activated BlackBerry or use Outlook to sync calendar items to your BlackBerry, then it’s quiet easy.  All you would have to do is import the csv or ics calendar file into outlook and sync.

However, if you’re one of the many people who don’t sync their calendars, what can you do?  I’ll give the general solution and then give a specific example of how to do it for Toronto Raptor fans who want the season schedule in their calendars.

General Method

The fact of the matter is, there are three ways to get items into your BlackBerry calendar:

1. Enter it manually yourself into your calendar.
2. Get invited to a meeting by receiving a meeting invite using an email address that is linked to you BlackBerry.
3. Synchronize with a calendar program or service.

When you have a calendar file containing a number of calendar events, options 1 and 2 become tedious.  So option 3 is the only real viable option.

For people who don synchronize with any product or service, there are a number of products or services that will allow you to do this but will cost you a fee and are usually complicated.  The cheap and easy way to do this is to utilize Google Calendar.  Here are the general steps to take:

1. If you don’t have one already, create a Google Calendar account here.
2. Ensure that the calendar file that you have is in ics or csv format.  If you’re not sure, contact me for suggestions on how to do so.
3. Import the calendar file into your Google Calendar. I’ll explain how this is done in the example later.
4. On your BlackBerry, install the Google Sync application.  The quickest way to do this is to browse to http://m.google.com/sync on your BlackBerry.
5. Setup Google Sync for BlackBerry to synchronize you calendar.
6. Start Synchronization

When the Synchronization is done, the calendar file will be on your BlackBerry.  At this point, if you no longer want the synchronization to continue, you can disable or uninstall Google Sync for BlackBerry.

Example: Toronto Raptors Game Schedule

Since I’m a Raptors fan and since most the recent inquiries were related to the Raptors season schedule, I’ve decided to use that as an example.  Please comment or contact me with feedback if the instructions are not clear.

Download the Raptors Schedule

1. Go to the Raptors schedule download page.
2. Download the iCal version of the schedule.  Do NOT use the instructions for Google Calendar since they are not meant for BlackBerry synchronization and will not work for that purpose.
3. Don’t forget to note the name of the file for a future step. It’s probably schedule.ics

Import into Google Calendar

1. If you don’t have a Google Calendar account, go here and click on Create Account then follow the steps.  When you’re done you should be in your Google Calendar.
2. Click the Add down-arrow button at the bottom of the calendar list on the left side of the page, and select Import Calendar.
3. Click Browse and choose the file that you downloaded earlier (schedule.ics), then click Open.
4. Click Import

At this point, the schedule should appear in your Google Calendar.

Download, Install and Setup Google Sync for BlackBerry

For this section, I’d like to link some very well written instructions here.  If you have any issues with them, please feel free to contact me.

Synchronize

The last step from the instruction linked for Google Sync install and setup was to initiate synchronization.  When the synchronization is done, the raptors schedule should appear in your BlackBerry calendar. At this point, if you don’t want to continue synchronizing with Google Calendar, you can disable or uninstall it.

And there you have it.  Try it out and let me know how it goes.

A recent Gartner report showed the latest state of the Smartphone market worldwide.  As the chart below shows, there is a clear divide starting to show in the market.  Symbian, BlackBerry OS, iPhone OS and Android are becoming the clear leaders.  Palm’s Web OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile should not be discounted yet, as I’ll explain later, but the lines are starting to show.

The real question is, can the market sustain this many different platforms or will they be forced to converge?  The most common view is that the platforms with the most applications will survive. Although, I tend to agree with that view,  I think there will be another factor.

The Application Factor

From a consumer perspective, people are buying platforms and not phones. Most think they are buying a phone, but in reality when consumers decide on a phone, the do so for one of two reasons: (1) Brand Appeal or (2) How much they can do with it.  Brand Appeal is a whole different discussion but typically the top players here (Nokia, RIM, Apple and Google) all have high brand value and appeal.  So in reality the main driver of Smartphone brand decision is item #2.  Consumers look at what they can do with the phone.  So in a sense they are looking at what applications they can get for it.  This is really defined by what applications exist for it which in turn is defined by which platform developers decided to build applications for.  In a long roundabout way, what I’m saying is that people will buy phones that developers decide to develop for.

As you can see here, the future of the Smartphone platform war will be decided by the decisions of the application developers. If this sounds all too familiar to you, it’s because it’s the exact same driver that decided the PC platform war.  Funny, you’d think Microsoft would be higher in the list just due to that.  Except this is really the same game except with different players and different rules.  The Smartphone is different than the PC.  It has a different purpose, a different user, a different user expectation and is defined by it’s connectivity and usability more than it’s expandability and customization.

What can the platform vendors do to stay in the game?  They need to cater to the needs of the development community.  They need to build an ecosystem for the developer community that encourages them to build and support their respective platform.  The main factors to driving the development community to your platform is a combination of large device sales, a powerful and easy to use development environment and a simple application deployment model.  Some see this as a Chicken & Egg problem: You need to sell devices to convince application developers to build for your platform, but you need those applications to sell devices.However, the truth of the matter is, if you device has sufficient functionality, it will get some level of high sales.  Also, if your development environment is easy, simple and universally available (i.e. on all PC platforms) then the barrier cost to develop for your mobile platform significantly drops resulting in adoption of the development community.  As such, some in-house application building to get the sales rolling combined with some great tools to get the 3rd party applications rolling can kick start the system resulting in the applications -> sales -> more applications -> more sales cycle.  Basically, in summary, “if you build it, they will come”!

The Content Factor

But there is another play here.  And this is where Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Palm’s Web OS (which is soon to be HP’s Web OS) come into play.  The second driver of the mobile platform will be universal content access and distribution.  What do I mean by that?

Well, in the past, I’ve written a blog about how Apple is positioning themselves to becoming a content distribution company with their devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc) being conduits to consuming that content.  Since then, RIM, Apple and Google have all announced or purchased mobile advertising capabilities, which is a strong indicator of the devices being content distribution conduits. Then Microsofts introduces Windows 7 Mobile and explains how well it ties into Zune and the Xbox.  Recently HP acquired Palm (approval pending) and made it extremely clear that they will focus on WebOS and expand it’s usage beyond Smartphones and leverage the platform for content distribution (they refer to it as being the “access” provider).  Finally let’s not forget Google’s Chrome OS and how well Chrome, Chrome OS and Android tie in together.

As you can see, all the players, including the new ones (i.e. HP), realize the value of content distribution capabilities (or content access as HP called it) combined with user experience ubiquity.  Both of these are enabled by platforms that can span different types of devices (i.e. not just Smartphones) and that have user experience and content distribution / access in mind.

Applications vs. Content

So which one is more important.  Well the answer is both are equally important.  Even though platforms are going to enable content access and application development, it’ll be up to the developer ecosystem, in conjunction with the content providers, to enable access to the content on the platforms.

Each of the big players have their own advantages that they can leverage to leap forward.  In the case of Apple, they have an advantage since they are also a content re-distributer via iTunes.  HP may have an advantage due to their deep pockets and large hardware portfolio.  Google’s advantage will be advertising expertise combined with leveraging advertising to subsidize the platform cost.  Microsoft’s advantage will be the fact that they are the only one that actually has a tie in to a gaming platform.  RIM’s advantage will be it’s security, communications advantage (BBM, push), network infrastructure and data compression.

What will really drive these platforms to the forefront is the degree of capabilities they provide to their developer ecosystem so that they can allow them to leverage the platforms capabilities to drive content distribution and consumption.

When it’s all said and done, regardless of how the Smartphone market ends up being partitioned, after this platform war is over, these Smartphone platforms will be a lot more than just “smart”-phone operating systems and the market itself will be transformed.

It’s been a while since my last blog mostly because I’ve been extremely busy.  I still am very busy, however a recent topic in the news has been on my mind and I really felt like I needed to write down my thoughts about it. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now about the public battle between Apple and Adobe related to Flash support on the iPhone.  Feel free to go search to read the details but here is a quick summary.

It started with Apple putting certain terms in it’s Developer License Agreement that directly prohibit Flash usage in iPhone apps, although not naming Adobe’s product directly.  Next, there was a huge outcry by the developer community along with a blog posting by a top Adobe developer telling Apple to “Screw off” although I guarantee that was not the word he first typed.  Finally, Mr. Jobs responded by deciding to let us all know his thoughts on Flash.  Adobe has since complained to the SEC and this may end up in an AntiTrust investigation.  Also others have jumped on the bandwagon praising HTML5 and saying Flash is not the right way to go.  Oh tsk tsk Microsoft.

Before you continue reading this posting, I do recommend you read Mr. Jobs’ thoughts on Flash first.  Let me also note that I’m usually a very strong supporter of Apple decisions as my previous posts on here would show.

Ignoring the rumours that Apple is working on a Flash alternative themselves, I’d like to concentrate on the main points Mr. Jobs made and give you my thoughts.  I will not follow Mr. Jobs’ order to make my point more clear.

First, I’ll comment about the Reliability, Security and Performance argument.

Here is an argument where Jobs is right on point.  Flash has a pretty bad record when it comes to security, performance and reliability, especially for mobile devices.  They’ve also been known to be very slow in responding to customer demands.  Both are signs of a dominant leader that has become somewhat complacent.  I’ll use this section to make my critique of Adobe.  Adobe obtained a very large market share of dynamic web content and then ignored all innovation and R&D in that sector as they concentrated on other areas.

However, there are many other pieces of software that have similar drawbacks, so this is hardly a good enough reason to drop support for a very widely used technology.  Most other organizations would have worked with the vendor to fix the issues.  But again, Jobs has a very good point here.

Jobs’ most important reason for his Flash embargo was the introduction of a third party layer to the development model.

I want to address this here because I think Jobs has a good point here as well.  Introducing a third party layer into your software development model makes you extremely dependent on the third party providing the layer.  If that third party is slow to respond to customer needs, then you find yourself behind the times and ultimately failing.

But wait! Who is the one who will be dependent on this third party layer?  Is it Apple? No!  It’s the application developer! So why does Apple care in that case.  One could argue that Apple wants to ensure that only the best applications are available in its AppStore and as such is insisting that developers utilizing the best design practices to development.  Yes, one could make that argument until they decide to browse the AppStore and see the amount of, let me call it Crap, that you can find on there!  This is obviously not the reason why Jobs mentioned this. The real reason is that it’s just an excuse.  An excuse that has a lot of technical merit, which is probably why he thought it made sense to make it the most important, but still just an excuse.

Apple does not have to have a Flash dependency if they don’t want to.  It would be the developer’s call!  If they or their application can be successful with the current feature sets and capabilities of the Flash platform, then who is Apple to deny them from doing so.

Touch was another argument that was used against Flash.

Jobs described how Flash was designed for mouse-based usage and as such Flash is not intended for touch devices.  So the argument is that developers will need to re-write their websites anyways, so why not write them using HTML5. Firstly, this argument makes the assumption that the majority of Flash website use the mouse-based paradigm Jobs is referring to.  I’ve been to many that don’t use Flash in this manner so I’m not sure if that assumption is true.  Secondly it assumes that re-writing your website in a new technology is the same as re-writing in Flash.  Now that assumption is definitely not true.

Anyone who has ever worked in the technology field knows that re-writing software in a new technology is a lot more expensive than tweaking the software using the existing technology.  Now, don’t get me wrong, as I understand that the new technology may have advantages over the existing one making the investment worthwhile, but let’s not make that assumption about HTML5 and Flash.  HTML5 is a standard that encompasses a lot more than what Flash is trying to achieve, it’s not like we’re comparing Apples to Apples here.

Jobs also talked about the battery life implications of Flash.

The core of this argument is that most Flash videos are encoded in a fashion that cannot use hardware decoding and as such the software decoding kills battery life.  He does note that Flash does support H.264 (for which there are hardware decoders) and then continues to say that once websites convert to H.264 as part of the HTML5 standard, that the hardware decoding can be used.  Note that he glosses over the fact that if websites use H.264 encoding via Flash, they would also gain the same benefit and would not have to re-code their website.  Sneaky sneaky!

The fact of the matter is, iPhone’s battery life is abismal and it has nothing to do with Flash.  Most SmartPhone hardware out there, iPhone included, have terrible battery life mostly due to their poor utilization of network resources combined with high-powered hardware that is required to run the large sized applications that the platform supports.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that high powered hardware and large sized applications are a good thing, it’s just that they are not managed properly.  Wait until OS 4 comes out and multi-tasking is enabled.

Jobs also felt the need to touch on Adobe arguments that blocking Flash blocks the “full web”.

Adobe claims that there are over 50,000 games or entertainment titles and 75% of the video on the web require Flash.  So by blocking it, Apple is blocking their mobile customers access to a large section of the web.  Now, I don’t know about the specific numbers (since they do sound exaggerated to me) but I do agree that Flash usage is pretty high up there.

Jobs counters this by saying that YouTube, which is estimated to house 40% of the web’s videos, works with iPhone and there are many Apps, in the AppStore of course, that can fill the void of the other videos and all the games.  I find this counter-argument hilarious!  Basically, Jobs is saying that you don’t need the whole web because Apple’s got an App for that! Sure, you may have to pay for it, either using actual Dollars or by using up your disk space, but that works well for Apple.  By far, my favorite counter argument.

Finally, Jobs decided to actually mention “Openness” or lack thereof of Flash.

This was actually Mr Jobs’ first argument but I thought it’s worth leaving to the end.  The summary of this argument is that Flash is proprietary and the web should be open.  He continues to say that he acknowledges that Apple has proprietary technology too, but that’s ok since it’s not web technology.  He then boasts how Apple was very big on Webkit creation and how all the popular SmartPhones are (or will be) using it.

So I’m going to ignore the hypocritical nature of argument since not only has Apple been a strong believer of “closed” technology, they are also a strong believer of “closed” business models including their stringent and non-transparent AppStore submission process.  I’ll ignore that part and focus on my real concern with this argument.

MG Siegler wrote a wonderful blog on TechCrunch titled “Facebook, The App Store, And The Sound of Inevitability”.  It’s a great posting explaining the history of open systems and how the open/closed technology cycle is cyclical.  The point of the posting is that it’s ok to have closed systems since they drive adoption but if those systems want to continue to survive then need to foster openness, if not become fully open.  Let me know if I got that right MG!

So if you follow that train of logic, then it should really be up to the market, the consumers or the developer community to decide when a technology is too closed and/or outdated to be used.  If Adobe wants Flash to continue to lead, then they need to make a move towards openness and make it fast. Clearly, it is not up to the platform vendor!  This is why RIM, Microsoft and Google are all planning to (or already do) support Flash on their mobile platforms.It seems to me that Apple is trying to make a power play here by cutting out Adobe.  Maybe it’s because they really are trying to push their own replacement as mentioned earlier.  Maybe it’s to hide the inadequacy of it’s otherwise spotless-looking platform.  Or maybe it’s for some other unknown reason.  Whatever the reason is, this seems to me more like a public lynching than a move for the sake of openness!

Feel free to comment and please be gentle Apple fans.  Remember that I’m a fan too.

Recently, we’ve seen the introduction of a few consumer products with twitter integration. Now I’m not talking software products or applications such as FourSquare.  No I’m referring to actual consumer products such as Withings Wifi Scale.  If you’re not familiar with it, the scale automatically sends your measurements via WiFi to your PC and iPhone.  However, what’s different about this scale is that it boasts Twitter support allowing you to tweet your weight.

So this got me thinking, what other home appliances and consumer products can we add Twitter support to.  I came up with 10 ideas, some of which are good but most are gags… or are they?

Please make any comments on how you would improve how these ideas would work or provide your own ideas.  If any are worthy, I will add them and give credit.

Finally, if you feel like taking these ideas, building them and selling them, feel free.  I’m all for open idea sharing.  Just please give me a shout and let me know so I can mention it on this blog site.

1. Twitter-Enabled Garage Door Opener

The idea would be to tweet when your garage is opened or closed.  Great for those stalkers who are trying to get into your garage.  But I guess I would use it by searching my twitter timeline at bed time to see if the last tweet was “garage opened” or “garage closed” determining if I need to go close it.  Laziness to the next level.

2. Twitter-Enabled TV

Here the idea would be for the TV to tweet which channel and show you’re watching.  This will probably be based on duration of time a channel is on.  Maybe it can also tweet attention span based on how often you change channels.  You’ll probably want some filtering for those people who watch some late night TV.

3. Twitter-Enabled Mailbox

Wouldn’t it be great if your mailbox could tweet every time it was opened.  With a weight sensor, it could also tell you if it had mail inserted or removed.  Great way for mail receipt notification.

4. Twitter-Enabled Wii Fit Plus

This is a basic extension of the Withings Wifi Scale I mentioned earlier.  Basically configure you Wii Fit Plus to tweet certain statistics about your workouts and personal assessments.  I actually think this idea has some merit.

5. Twitter-Enabled Microphone

The idea here would be a mic with speech recognition that would tweet what you say.  Maybe enabled with a button on the mic to it doesn’t tweet everything you say.  Would be a great addition to a conference or a wedding to give updates via Twitter.

6. Twitter-Enabled Coffee Machine

Now this would be the ultimate office coffee machine.  Instead of putting a web cam to see if coffee is ready, it would just tweet whenever coffee is almost out, started brewing or ready to consume.  This can also let you see how old the coffee is too by searching your timeline for last “started brewing” tweet.

7. Twitter-Enabled Car

How about enabling your car with WiFi and Twitter.  It could tweet updates such as gas remaining, gas consumption and other diagnostics.  Maybe even tweet maintenance schedule and reminders.

8. Twitter-Enabled Bicycle

Similar to the car idea, this bicycle would collect information about your ride and tweet it.  It could also tweet famous landmarks that you may have hit during your ride as well.  This idea could also cover stationary bikes at home.

9. Twitter-Enabled Toothbrush

Shout-out to @eQandil for this idea.  Basically this toothbrush would tweet every time it was used.  Maybe for how long it was used too.  The higher end model would even tell you how many brushstrokes where done.  Great way to ensure your kids are brushing their teeth.

10. Twitter-Enabled Music System

Now this one may actually be a real useful idea.  Many people like to share their media via twitter (and other means) with friends.  Basically this system would send a tweet for any new album being played, for any new song or for the current song, etc.  I guess this could be expanded to commercial audio systems that are used by DJs and such.  I’m sure my man @bmedia911 would be using that.

So there is a lot of talk about how the future of the Smartphone technology and market is going to pan out.  There are many thoughts on the subject and I’ll let you browse the net to find the popular ones.  I’ll be honest I haven’t read them all mostly because I like to formulate my own opinions.

There is no doubt that the future of Smartphones lies in applications.  But of course I don’t mean all the bikini apps that are on AppStore, oh wait.  Seriously though, the applications make the phone.  And even though people attribute this to Apple in the current Smartphone era, Apple only learned from their mistake with Microsoft.  If you’re old enough, I’m sure you’ll remember Microsoft’s Where Do You Want To Go Today? marketing campaign.  Well, Apple’s “There’s An App For That” campaign is basically the same thing.

However, just bombarding the user with Apps is not the future of Smartphones, or at least I hope not for the sake of our children.  The real future will come with smarter phones and even smarter Apps.

Seriously, Where do you want to go today

In an ideal future, when you setup your newly purchased Smartphone, it’ll ask you a bunch of questions, browse your local emails (locally only) and track your usage behaviour.  Based on the information it collects, you are presented with simple options and/or presentations for your day to day activities.  So if you like reading news, all your news feeds will show up on a ticker-like interface on the home page.  Same thing for messages from people you regularly communicate with.  If you’re a weather buff, your background will indicate the current state of the weather (just like Poynt does now).  If you only commute to and from work, then when you start driving, your phone will guess at where you’re going and give you directions based on traffic info.  If you’re a business man, when you get a call but you’re in a scheduled meeting, your phone will not play that annoying star trek ring tone but rather a small beep.  My point is that we need to bring HTC’s tag line to life.  As they say, “You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you”.

For the examples I’ve described (and more), there are already Apps that do those things.  However, as a user you have to seek them out, buy them, download them, install them and configure them.  After that, you still have to seek them out to utilize them.  The future of Smartphones is to remove these onerous tasks and have it done for you.  The device would figure out what you need and present it to you in a way that is seamless and easy to use.

Smarter than the average Smartphone

Another key aspect of the future of Smartphones is the addition of more smarts.  Now, there are people out there already thinking about this.  Siri is a great example of this additional smarts.  It’s a virtual personal assistance that does the following:

“Just like a real assistant, Siri understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time.”

And that is exactly the point.  Future Smartphones need to be Siri on steroids.  Your phone has to be smarter.  If you email or message a friend to meet at 6pm but you have an appointment in your address book at that time, your phone should warn you.  Heck, it should warn you f you are on a phone call and you promise to show up at 7pm at home but you have a meeting that ends at 6:30pm and you need 45 minutes to get to your destination.  Or imagine around 11:45am, your phone asks you if you need to buy lunch today and then based on your usual preferences, recommends a place nearby, provides you with the menu, etc.

Your Smartphone knows more information about you and your location than you actually do.  So it needs to assist you in your daily activities.. seamlessly!

Change from within

Although most experts believe that 3rd party applications are the key to future of Smartphones, I believe that it’s a lot more than that.  The device manufacturers have a huge role to play.  First, they need to provide their developer community with the tools and capabilities to implement all the examples I mentioned above.  This not only includes great development environments and access to the inner workings of the device, but also needs to include no restrictions from creating such Apps (such as Apple’s AppStore policy).  Second, they need to add more logic and smarts into their respective platforms to allow for the automated and dynamic loading and configuration of the correct set of applications based on user preferences and behaviour as outlined earlier.

So there you have it… my view of the future of Smartphones.  Now go develop it

As usual, all comments as welcome.

You may have already heard about Swype, but if you haven’t, it’s time to pay attention.  Swype is an innovative technology that:

“provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 50 words per minute.”

Check out the videos on Swype’s product page.  It’s quiet impressive.  And it comes preloaded with your T-Mobile MyTouch 3G as well.  So you can try this baby out for real.

Now what’a really exciting to me here is that finally there is some innovation in the mobile space again.  Too many phones have been making minor iterations to the hardware specs and adding a few new software features.  There has not been any real innovation in the mobile devices space in a few years now and that includes the iPad!  Finally, here is technology that may actually have a significant affect on the user experience.

Personally, I haven’t tried Swype out, so I can’t say that it will have a dramatic improvement on the user experience when it comes to typing on virtual keyboards.  However, the reviews have been good.  And who are we kidding, it can’t get any worse that what it is now.  I type 10 times faster on my BlackBerry Bold 9700 Keyboard that on any virtual keyboard and I’ve tried them all (iPhone, Storm, etc).

So kudos Swype for bringing some innovation into our midsts.

Today, Palm lowered their revenue guidance for Q3 and FY10 due to slower than expected consumer adoption.  In other words, the Pixi was a flop and the Pre didn’t sell enough units.  So what shall we make of this news.

Wrong Target Market

So why did this happen.  Ignoring the Pixi, the Pre is a pretty slick device with an even slicker GUI and WebOS.  I tried out the device personally and I must say it’s a pretty nice device.  It even comes with wireless battery charging.   So why isn’t it selling.  Personally, I believe that the real target audience for the Pre is the one that Palm intended for the Pixi — the student crowd.  That crowd wants the higher resolution camera, the wifi and the larger screen.  However, that crowd doesn’t want the $150 price tag of the Pre. They don’t even want the $100 price tag of the original Pixi.

In my opinion, Palm priced the Pre too high and wasted their time and money on the Pixi.  I understand that the Pre is too costly to retail at a lower price.  But at the same time, they built a device interface that is ideal for that market segment.  The device is perfect for them, but too expensive.  Even Apple is not reaping the rewards of lowering the iPhone 3G pricing to $99.  The ones reaping the rewards of that market are Nokia, Samsung and RIM with their lower entry $0 and $50 devices.

I’ll also note that the freaky Palm Pre commercials didn’t help.

Now What

Well, here goes Palm again struggling as it has been since the Treo 650.  However, this time Palm has something that it didn’t have before — a real product with real potential.  The Pre is actually a solid phone and the WebOS is equally as good.  So what should Palm do?  Accept the acquisition offer.

In my opinion, Palm is now prime for a takeover bid, hostile or not.  It’s valuation just dropped by 19% today and probably more if things keep going badly.  Plus there are players out there who are possibly interested in new operating systems and even phones.  So who would be interested?  My top guesses are Nokia and RIM.  I’m also guessing that the offer will happen within the year if not by summer time. I’ll stop my speculation here as I’m a RIM employee and I don’t want to imply that I know of any such plans.

Job Saving Disclaimer: FOR THE RECORD, I DO NOT KNOW OF ANY SUCH PLANS.