Over at Sister-Site CrackBerry.com, Kevin is rocking the LiveBlog of the announcements from today's developer conference right now. Why should you care? Well, it looks like RIM is hoping to close the gap on a few of the things they're missing that webOS has (or will have) and are pushing ahead on other fronts. To wit:
- RIM Announces upcoming OpenGL support for the BlackBerry Platform. This is the big one and it will go a long way towards making the BB OS feel a little less stale when compared to other, more modern mobile operating systems. We've obviously been hoping for the same for webOS (perhaps in the form of WebGL).
- In conjunction with the above, RIM is also allowing themes into their App Store.
- RIM and Adobe, Sitting in a Tree. Palm won't have exclusivity on Flash and Flash Apps, as RIM is beefing up their participation in the Open Screen Project.
- RIM Unveils New Services Platform for Developers. RIM made their name on push email, now they're offering push, advertising, location services, and more to developers. It looks to be more robust than then announced-but-not-delivered Mojo Messaging Service for webOS, which offers push and location awareness.
We know that Palm is driving as quickly as a small company can to offer more services and support to developers - they did just announce in-browser development with Ares - but now that RIM seems to finally 'get' that they need to put some more glitz into the OS, Palm's going to have to work double-time to stay in the game.
Palm and webOS fans: Nervous? Shrugging? What do you think?
Comments
Nervous. Me = Stock owner -.-
I don't think anyone can shrug, but at this point, BlackBerry and webOS are aimed as drastically different markets. That doesn't mean there isn't crossover, but the majority of BB owners wouldn't consider a Pre or Pixi, and the majority of Pre/Pixi owners wouldn't consider a BlackBerry. That's just my opinion, of course. :)
Hopefully there is room for all of these phones to co-exist.
/Kevin
WebOs is falling behind, palm have been focusing on enhancing their OS but not by adding feature but by optimizing their actual offerings. They really need to step it up, and quick. I hope to see some features added by the end of the year, like: video recording (will be a killer), OpenGL, flash support, GPU optimization (the rumor that was laying around last week), and others.
Palm has waited too long for all these upcoming add ons for webOS.....now that makes them behind in the smartphone game yet again....android is ahead of them and at this rate, there will be no PRE II, unless they are absorbed into a bigger company
I find it ironic that someone mentions webOS is falling behind in a post about the Blackberry OS. Let's face it, the Blackberry OS is antiquated junk these days. Horrible user interface, the browser is garbage, if it wasn't for the Blackberry service and BBM, nobody would be using these things.
Was just about to make that point. Unless RIM completely rewrites the OS, all this DOESN'T MATTER. RIM is a joke for Web compared to iPhone, WebOS or Android. A JOKE. Same for Windows Mobile, unless version 7 isn't Redmond vaporware.
This means the crappy RIM browser will be fast with flash, but still crappy.
Yeah... but either Windows Mobile or RIM option is better for business users compared to WebOS.
Completely depends on what you do in your business.
While the rest of this community may call whining from users to add more features and apps the Palm stock price solidifies the grief. Palm and webOS are losing attention of its targert audience; forseeably beyond this holiday season may be trouble for Palm. Step it up Palm.
At this point, I think video and GPU accelerations are the smart things to work on. From the sounds of it webOS 1.31 will have facebook support, which a lot of people wanted. Flash support would be nice, but I really think that needs GPU support to be effective. Video is a popular option to have, and if you include that, more phones will sell. Mix GPU support into that, and you will get a smoother OS, better battery life and possibly some apps with 3D graphics in them.
To me that would be a winning mix for palm.
I still say that Palm is not doing a good job of marketing the device. All of the exposure to date is primarily a shot/photo of the device in a commercial or a television show. There's been next to nothing that shows off the uniqueness of the Pre. The "common man" has no real awareness of the capabilities of this device.
6 months from now, RIM will be where Palm was a year ago. Their hardware inspires hatred, and setting them up for email requires unnecessary work for IT departments. If you can get an employee an iPhone, an Android phone, or a Palm webOS phone that does the same things with less work AND the employees actually want to have them... RIM's toast.
Palm needs to step it up and add the features its missing to compete ! Like: video recording, forward text messaging, flash support and many other things that are missing from the Pre! Every other new phone out there has theses features above and more!
Lets be honest! Palm Pre is falling behind! And they can't afford to let this happen! They won't survived next year if they don't make major improvements FAST!
Some large out side company will need to buy them out soon! If Palm can't make the major improvements FAST! Palm won't be able to compete or survived in 2010!
Really? When did the iPhone get flash support?
I am finishing up my Blackberry 8830 with Verizon and agree it's crap. The browser is as bad as blazer on my other phone treo 755. BB needs to get updated since its OS is more antiquated than palm os.
The big new player is Android. I played with it this weekend at best buy and was impressed by its responsiveness in its browser. I can't believe android already has thousands of applications. Palm needs to get some high level apps going and not just little web os apps.
When my BB/verizon contract is up in jan I'll have to think hard about android vs web os.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard "they're aiming at a different market". How many markets are there in the cell phone industry? Give me a break.
Really? There are many markets. Children, teens, college students, small business owners, corporate employees, blue collar workers, elderly, and those are just a few age and job demographics, you could go into gender, race, hobbies, economic status, preferred features... contrary to popular belief, not everyone wants a phone that does everything.
Are you kidding me? If Palm is going to pinpoint their "market" that closely, it won't be around for Pre 2.0. A phone has to do (nearly) everything to appeal to more people. The consumer isn't going to use everything a phone does, it just has to do what they want!
Better to be great at a few things than mediocre at many. I don't want a phone so busy with "features" that it can't keep up with them and it sacrifices responsiveness to do more things.
Someone around here, probably a few people actually, have this canned litany of features that because WebOS doesn't do them that it's a dying platform. Every time I see it I chuckle because they have zero appeal to me and I'm sorta glad they don't have them. It means that Palm's developers have more time to focus on improving the stuff I do like.
Every smartphone has at least one primary target demographic. They satisfy those people and stay in business. They expand business by appealing to secondary demographics near to the primaries.
"Better to be great at a few things than mediocre at many"...That's true on most occasions. But with the competition in the smartphone market now, "great at a few things" won't cut it, that's not a smartphone. People expect more from their smartphones now. This is why no one is talking about the Pre anymore. Every article and new smartphone OS comparison is between Android, RIM and iPhone. But by god, the Pre has cards!!! YAY!
To be honest, I think they need to release a new phone. While the Pre is a great phone, even with enhanced/new features (visual voicemail, video recording, mic recording, etc), I still dont think it'll change anyone's mind who isn't already made up on the Pre.
Hopefully, something new is coming down the pipeline. I'd personally love a slab phone.
If Palm updated the software to better than a Treo 755p, then I would buy it right away (proper calendar, universal search in calendars, categories, custom fields in contacts, full backup, sync my 8 years of Palm data, customizable TXT alerts, video camera, no app limit). All these could be done on WebOS without any hardware changes.
Mainly shrugging since I've never really been interested in a BB device but also glad because RIM is really Palm's competition right now and they will hopefully spur innovation. On opposite ends of the spectrum are Apple who makes essentially one handset and their own OS and Google who just makes the OS while 3rd parties make multiple handsets. RIM and Palm Make the OS and a few different handsets and hope to straddle the line between choice of hardware and that level of soft/hardware integration you get when one company covers both.
webOS has until Christmas for my continued business. IMHO there is too much competition to fall back on the WebOS' youth. The market could care less about WebOS' youth.
I'll be honest, I do worry about sticking with PALM simply because no matter how fast they work, when the other companies employ their full resources to move forward with changing their OS or implementing new features to keep up with competition, PALM just doesn't have the same amount of man power steam. What they released with the PRE was pretty and cool, but wasn't enough to be a game changer that allows them to rest on their laurels. It's very possible that the strong will just keep getting stronger, while PALM may continue to struggle to just hang on rather than really coming out with something that significantly shifts and pulls favor in their direction. Hope is not lost, but I do get concerned that I've committed to a new OS that will continually be just a little behind it's strong competitors for one reason or another. It's a fairly common story in technology and entrepreneurship that a better product, service or idea gets beat by a competitor with more power or money. This could still happen to PALM despite my hopes to the contrary.
Palm is looking more and more like the Amiga of old.... ;-(
...the A2000 Video Toaster w/ was light years ahead of it's time...
I certainly have my own opinion about BlackBerry.
http://www.mobileinfoplanet.com/blog/blog1.php/2009/11/07/point-of-black...
Just read your post and that has been *precisely* my thought of BlackBerry.
BBOS UI is so bad it makes WinMob look good. The number of clicks required to do even simple things is ridiculous. I think people who love their BB either don't use it for much besides messaging/phone or they've never tried any other smartphone. I've really tried to like BB because I like their hardware and the Treo-like form factor, but there's just no way to like the OS and apps.
Since when was Palm _ever_ going to have flash exclusively? Adobe has always said that they're supporting every platform except the iPhone. Non-news, imo, since this has been known from the get-go.
And I just wish that people would realize that Palm is hard at work on most everything they claim is missing. Do you really think they're sitting on their hands, waiting for an arbitrary date before they release the updates? Patience people.
I agree with you somewhat, i agree that they are hard at work....but how comfortable would you be with your job security if you were employed by palm? hard at work in that business simply isnt good enough especially with apple and BB owning the market. any edge they can get they need and they are too slow with figuring out their own OS. and just now figuring out the path to be able to use the gpu is definately unaccpetable. they have to lead in innovation...which palm definately isnt at this point
You can't lead in innovation on every front.
Look at the iPhone, they just added video, just added cut and paste, and the iPhone wasn't even considered a smart phone until the app catalog came out a year later. These are all things that the Treo was doing 3 years prior to the iPhone being released.
What disappoints me is that Palm didn't build on the features of the Treo apps, they started over. For example: The threaded text messaging app on the Treo is STILL the best text messaging app I've ever seen.
If Palm wants to improve the WebOS apps, they just need to look at what they lost feature wise to the PalmOS apps.
i agree with you cant lead on every front.....but which front does palm lwad in right now? ill give palm the lead in multitasking apps....thats not enough in my eyes
My company tried to give me a blackberry and I just gave it back after about a week. I really hated it.
I have been using palm devices for about 6 years now and I absolutely love them. I am a bit frustrated with the Pre and lack of some basic functions of my previous devices. I see the potential of pre and it's great, but at the same time I have given some thought to switching to another phone like the HTC. I am just waiting a little bit longer to see what Palm can do, I know they are working hard. I paid full price for my pre, other the web, I don't feel I got good value for my money.
I gotta wonder sometimes if people really want their phones to have all this functionality cuz they are going to use every bit of it, or they just want to be able to tell their friends, "look what my phone can do." People buy the iPhone as a status symbol, for music, web surfing, and games. Most of them are not power users of the phone. Blackberry users, primarily email and BBM. Damn thing is more like a 2 way pager for people now than a smartphone. These days I think people just want a cool facebook app more than anything else on any device. Don't get me wrong. I want cool features for my phone too, but I know they will be coming soon. Apple, BB, and Android have a jump start for sure, but when Palm announced WebOS, no one expected it to be that much of a leap from PalmOS. They are making incremental updates, as they should, but I have a very strong feeling that their next leap will shut some people up. Just wish folks would exercise some more patience given it's only been 5 months since it's been on the market. Take some ritalin and chill out.
If you want a android, go get it. Quit crying about Palm. The Pre is a good phone. Web OS is ahead of the game and Palm is working hard to stay compitive. RIM is no compition. BB has their followers (my wife is one of them) who are not going anywhere, but people are not going to leave Palm for those phones. Now android is a problem, but in the end it is just a OS. With no control of the devices, they will just be another phone. Not a status symbol as the iphone is. Even the Pre gets noticed in a crowd.
Whos the big winner here? Adobe w/ Flash ;) - all these phones are giong to have that one single app development platform in common, so why would I make my app for just a single device or have to customize it for each platform when I can make my app in flash and publish it instantly to the web, and every mobile device (android, palm, BB, etc) :P
- sooo if that's the case, its going to come down to hardware quality, and as a Pre owner, I even have to say it's not the best built thing ever - I've not had any problems, but I would like something with a bit more quality to it in my next phone.
Palm should have bought a better investor to get all these new features out faster!
Palm should have gotten a better investor, is what I meant.
Want to leave a comment? Register for free!
In an effort to reduce comment spam, you need to log in to comment. Registration is fast, free, and easy and gives you access to comment, discuss the Palm Pre on the largest Pre forums on the 'net, enter contests, and much more. Join now!