Palm nostalgia and marketing folk
Hardware
Some less than stellar news about Palm is being reported by Kevin Kelleher over at GigaOm.
The latest grim plot twist came last week when Palm reported its fiscal second-quarter earnings. Smartphones sold to consumers fell 4 percent from a year ago, before Palm even debuted the Pre. A costly ad campaign sank gross margins to 25.6 percent from 27.9 percent a quarter earlier.
You know who should acquire Palm? 3Com! :)
In all seriousness though, I only left high school a few years ago and while I didn't have any pressing need for a PDA I grew up tinkering around with a Palm IIIx while my friends used Game Boys and have fond memories of it. I still reckon Graffiti is the closest anyone has come to an accurate, reliable and speedy on screen character recognition system.
I have no doubt Palm engineers (even if they've all changed since then) have the gutso, imagination and talent to produce amazing hardware and software, but much like Microsoft they suffer at the hands of less than competent marketing folk. Hope the company can get its act together.
As a matter of disclosure, I've long since switched to an iPhone but my dad's still holding out for a Pre in Singapore, when they decide to ship them here (second strike against their marketers). Keep the fires burning Palm.
