Category: Mobile (Page 21 of 65)

Palm lowers sales expectations

February 25, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

In a release today, Palm announced it was lowering sales expectations for the year due to slower than expected customer adoption of the new WebOS platform. As CEO Jon Rubinstein put things, “driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated.”

His wording seems to suggest that the company still thinks consumers will pick Palm, but that it’s going to take more time. I’ve got news, fellas. It ain’t happening. It’s now nearly eight months since the Pre launched, eight months in which the company has failed to build a strong developer base, to say nothing of mediocre sales. We’re just weeks past Palm’s launch with Verizon, about which we’ve heard nothing. That rarely means good things.

Now everyone has just one question in mind – who’s going to buy Palm? The only other possibility would be for the company to develop yet another device, which I highly doubt it has the money to do. We know RIM and Nokia could both use a better platform, and Dell has been making passing attempts the cell phone market for years. None of them have actually expressed interest, though, and I would think only Nokia or RIM would be in a position to really capitalize on that kind of acquisition.

In any case, Palm is in trouble. We’ll see if it can dig itself out by year’s end.

Source: Business Insider

Mobile, News

palm palm ceo palm fail palm pixi palm pre palm sales pixi pre pre sales statistics webos

The Windows Phone meltdown begins

February 22, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Wired went out and found a bunch of Windows Phone developers to see what they think about Windows Phone 7 Series. The response is…less than pleasant. In fact, most of them sound pretty concerned if not downright pissed. That’s bad for Microsoft, considering its developers that keep a platform viable in the marketplace. Let’s start with one of the more hilarious quotes.

“I think it’s just royally fucked. That place is so big: The tools, the people, it’s all so fragmented.” Awesome. That’s Kai Yu, CEO of BeeJive, a company that develops an IM app. There is at least one developer, though, that’s excited about the new platform. “My speculation is that Microsoft has some incredible platforms they can tie all together with the new mobile platform.” That’s Jim Scheinman, COO of Pageonce, a productivity app developer. “If one developer can write across all the other platforms, that would be easier for us and all the developers…. If you want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers, it would behoove Microsoft to try to make that happen. That would be a very, very exciting opportunity for all of us.”

It would be exciting, but Microsoft has burned a lot of bridges by torching its last platform. It’s got a lot of ass-kissing to do before there will be any happy Windows Phone developers in the world.

Source: Wired

microsoft, Mobile, News

developer relations developers headlines microsoft windows windows phone windows phone 7

Kindle heads to Blackberry

February 19, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Amazon is starting to see the writing on the wall, it seems. There isn’t a compelling reason for people to buy a Kindle anymore. Other ereaders offer the same price on books with more features and the latest wave of tablet PCs make the hardware look obsolete. So what does Bezos do? He releases a Kindle app for yet another piece of hardware: the Blackberry.

Amazon recently opened the floodgates with Kindle support for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Windows machines. Today we get Blackberry support and the company says it’s headed for Macs and iPads next. If that doesn’t sound like admitted defeat, I don’t know what does. It’s funny too, considering the publisher problems Amazon has had since the iPad announcement.

“Since the launch of our popular Kindle for iPhone app last year, customers have been asking us to bring a similar experience to the BlackBerry, and we are thrilled to make it available today,” said Amazon’s Kindle VP, Ian Freed. There is at least one difference between the two; the Blackberry version doesn’t support creating annotations from within the app.

Official Site

Apps, ebooks, Mobile, News

Blackberry blackberry ereader ebooks ereader Kindle kindle app mobile kindle

Are Android phones releasing too quickly?

February 17, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Take a look at that phone. It’s like the Nexus One, right? Just prettier. That UI looks great. And is that an optical trackball I see? This is the HTC Desire, the Nexus One’s smoking hot younger sister. It seems a bit strange that HTC would enter a contract with Google, build the Nexus One, and then release a better phone just a couple weeks later. It’s a trend that’s happening often with Android phones, and I think it’s starting to hurt the platform.

Consider the Droid. It was, at the time, the best Android phone to date. It looked great, pioneered Android 2.0, and debuted on America’s favorite network. By all accounts, Droid owners should have been very happy people. That is, until the Nexus One rolled into town. It had a newer version of Android, a better hardware interface, and it did away with that hideous physical keyboard. Unfortunately, a lot of Android fans had already flocked to the Droid to show their Google support. It’s a big problem in the US, where most consumers lock into contracts for subsidized hardware prices. The Nexus One released with lackluster sales.

Now this. There is no official word on a US release, but it’s headed for Asia in April and likely stateside shortly after. As pretty as this phone is, and as great as the Sense UI may be, I’d bet we’ll see some underwhelming sales numbers. If people didn’t buy the Android, they almost certainly picked up the Nexus One. Anyone that’s left is there by mere happenstance – an unwillingness to pay a disconnect fee a few months early, perhaps. This could be the best phone in the world, but the pace of Android hardware release will turn it into an anecdote.

Apple has been prone to the same thing in the past. If you ever bought an iPod you know it was playing second fiddle in just a few months. It’s something Cupertino got right with the iPhone, though. Even though there have been several iterations, Apple has kept its mouth shut about the product until just days before launch, giving it time to offload some of the older hardware before the newest version launches. Does it piss some people off? Sure. But much less so than watching new hardware roll out every month or two or getting an announcement of new hardware on the same schedule.

Mobile

android android phone android release schedule droid google phone htc htc desire motorola droid nexus one

Windows Phone 7 Series: Ballmer’s gambit

February 16, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

For all the talk of the Windows Phone 7 Series, you’d think it was going to save Microsoft in the mobile market. That may be true, but it’s going to be an ugly transition. I’m sure few people missed the fact that Windows Phone 7 means everything that came before is obsolete, least of all the current Windows Mobile users. It’s gone. Kaput. None of the current Windows Mobile software will function in the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem.

A lot of people say it was necessary. I tend to agree. Windows Mobile was butt ugly and ran about as fast as an 80 year-old with an artificial hip. It had no evolutionary cycle, not to stay competitive anyway. But doing away with the old has left Windows Mobile with an 8-10 month lame duck period. Development is going to grind to a halt, likely within the week. That’s going to leave a lot very unhappy users who have been loyal to the brand to this point. I guess Microsoft expects that they’ll be willing to wait until the holidays for a phone with any new features.

The message from Microsoft today was clear: Windows Mobile is dead. We’re looking at an eight month grieving period at the very least.