CEO Ed Colligan was interviewed by Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona regarding Apple’s upcoming (June 2007) iPhone.
Our best translation from German:
“In my opinion it looks rather like a highly developed media player, which happens to include a phone,” Colligan said.
“The iPhone could be interesting for people who like music and films with occasional phone use, but for businesspeople the touch-sensitive screen without a physical button keyboard will be a challenge.”
Apple has supplied “nothing at all” regarding iPhone to date, according to Colligan. There’s a huge difference between giving a keynote speech and actually developing and shipping the devices, Colligan said.
Colligan said, ” I have great respect for Apple, but won’t be easy to create a good smartphone that will functions on networks worldwide. Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung have worked on this for for 25 years and have only partially succeeded today. Our Palm Treo already has 90% of Apple’s iPhone features at a much lower price… By the way, if this is an interview about the iPhone, you should talk with the Apple people instead.”
Full article (in German) here.
Yes, the iPhone will be interesting for people who like music and films and occasionally use the phone. Keep telling yourself that, Ed. Maybe it’ll just go away (along with some other things).
In regard to Colligan’s use of one of the anti-iPhone FUD camapign’s major talking points: The Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko – who has actually touched and used the Apple iPhone – reports, “I think the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is a huge improvement over the mechanical thumbpads found on the Treo and any other smart phones of its size… After 30 seconds, I was already typing faster with the iPhone than I ever have with any other phone.”
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How Steve Jobs played hardball in iPhone deal with AT&T (Cingular) – February 17, 2007
RUMOR: Apple iPhone 4GB for $299, 8GB for $399 with 2-year AT&T contract? – February 16, 2007
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Palm CEO: ‘We don’t want to follow design fads’; Nokia CEO challenges Apple over iPhone – February 13, 2007
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How Verizon blew the Apple iPhone deal – January 29, 2007
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FUD Alert: Apple iPhone ‘isn’t very practical’ and a ‘security risk’ for business – January 24, 2007
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“By the way, if this is an interview about the iPhone, you should talk with the Apple people instead.”
Only intelligent thing he said.
Of course that’s what Ed would say – that’s what his stockholders pay him to say.
In fairness, he’s right. The Treos offer a similar (not equal) set of features at a much lower price. Chevy also offers a similar (not equal) set of features as a BMW for a much lower price. However, as far as phones are concerned, the only choice has been Chevy. Now that there is a new gold standard in the mobile phone world, a lot of people are going to “trade up”.
MDN Magic Word: “hell”, as in “How in the hell can I get my Treo to give me random access voice mail?”
As a Treo 650 owner, I am not pleased at all. Palm has non-existent Mac support. I have never, ever, synced up my Treo to my iCal completely. Even using MissingSync. It’s bulky. I do like some of the palm programs, like PocketQuicken. GoogleMaps is a great thing on it as well. But, honestly, I’m ditching it as soon as the iPhone is out. Palm is like stuck in 2000.
“Six dinosaurs.” – LOL!
“Six dinosaurs”…. LOL… that is awesome!
“By the way, if this is an interview about the iPhone, you should talk with the Apple people instead.”
A man who knows little or nothing about his competition and what differentiates his company from the competition is displaying profound ignorance and foolishness. Well, Ed, welcome to the sad and inimical world of complacency, insular thinking, and regret, you’ll fit right in. You might have noticed that many of your friends have already arrived.
“iPhone, bitch”
Eric…
I’ve got the treo 700p. It’s nice, and does a good job, for a bit old clunky looking hand held. The syncing was a hassle for me also with my phone and my boss’. If you’re using missing sync, you have to deselect all of the palm conduits in the missing sync program, then it works ok. (just unclick the box next to everything that has the palm logo next to it in the missing sync prog, boot missing sync without the phone plugged in.)Just figured that out the other day. Guess where I got the right info? not the palm website, or the palm customer support line, or even with the email customer support with missing sync. I got it at the genius bar of my local apple store.
I just can’t bring myself to use cingular again. I’d love an iPhone, but the worst customer service experience of my life was with ATnT, and I’m not going there again. I’ll wait until it releases with other carriers… 2-3 years is what the cingular people are telling me.
Jim – the independent voter
Actually, from the Swedish…
“In my oopeeniun it luuks rezeer leeke-a a heeghly defeluped medeea pleyer, vheech heppens tu incloode-a a phune-a. Zee iPhune-a cuoold be-a interesteeng fur peuple-a vhu leeke-a mooseec und feelms veet oocceseeunel phune-a use-a, boot fur booseenesspeuple-a zee tuooch-senseetife-a screee veethuoot a physeecel boottun keybuerd veell be-a a chellenge-a. Bork bork bork.”
“can you please turn this mic off? I’m sick of answering iPhone questions…”
..
.
.
.
“By the way, that iPhone is sure as nice, and the Treo is almost as good!”
People dont get it
Apple if they get a tiny tiny amount of the market (which they will) will make an absolute fortune.
They dont need to dominate in fact Jobs said in the keynote about the extremely small amount of market share and what the number of sold units would be. So everyone is leaping about comparing it to this that and who knows what but this will be a great piece of hardware/software for Apple even if they only get 0.1% market share they will be a rolling in cash. The Phone market sells billions of units a year the MP3 market is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
“Our Palm Treo already has 90% of Apple’s iPhone features at a much lower price…”
I had hoped that MDN would have provided Cooligan’s explanation regarding what this other “90%” and “10%” actually means. I would have liked to have understood Ed’s technological expertise and corporate philosophy as he compared and contrasted the similarities and differences of Treo and iPhone. If anyone could provide a link to a complete English translation of ths interview, please do so.
Interesting, apparently even Palm knows that Apple makes iPhone, not Cicso. Sorry, Cisco, you dropped the ball.
More free advertising for Apple — yes!!!
Isn’t it amazing — the response of these pigs to the cast pearls?
The Treo has got buttons, real buttons. Does the iPhone have real buttons? Hell no. Does the Treo sync with OS X? Why would we want to sync with OS X? You want songs? You want me to sing a song?La, la, la. Do you like that! Why do you keep harping about songs? Internet? Palm does internet. So, what’s your point? This interview is over, go away!
I gotta fire my media consultant! (Presses plastic buttons.) What’s his email again?
i’ve gone through 5 treo’s
they die after about 14 months of hard use
my 650 goes in the trash the day the iphone ships
palm is toast
What else can they do really? Obviously they can’t compete with it so all they can do is tell themselves it isn’t relevant. I guess it makes them feel better.
I am so fscking sick of Treo, I could scream. I won’t list a diatribe here, but the comments about syncing are true.
Fsck all that bullshit about “de-selecting”. I’M A MAC USER. NOT A WINDOWS USER. I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT NOW. AND I WANT IT TO WORK. SEEMLESSLY. EASILY. I HAVE OTHER THINGS TO WORK ON. I’M NOT A DWEEB-GEEK. IDON’T WANT TO MUCK AROUND AT ALL.
Get it?
Excuse me.
SEAMLESSLY.
using a microscopic physical keyboard is easy for “businesspeople”…
using a microscopic virtual keyboard will be impossible for “businesspeople”…
I’m sick of this fscking talking point.
Palms market value is 1.64B$ maybe it will go away.
Poor bastard. Life is going to be very hard for him.
” Chevy also offers a similar (not equal) set of features as a BMW for a much lower price.”
Difference is I could afford an iPhone.
using a microscopic virtual keyboard will be impossible for “businesspeople”…
I’m not saying the iPhone isn’t sleek, but i think there is a grain of truth to that. You don’t want to have to look at the phone to enter a number. Being able to feel the keys is a plus. And people with fingernails…how that going to work with touch screen?
‘m not saying the iPhone isn’t sleek, but i think there is a grain of truth to that. You don’t want to have to look at the phone to enter a number. Being able to feel the keys is a plus
—
huh? nobody does that.
you either have the number entered into your phone already, or you look at the keys and punch it in.
what kind of knob is looking sideways when he punches in a phone number
“oops wrong number, i was watching the game. sorry.”
As a German-speaker I’d like to correct MDN’s claim that Ed Colligan ‘can’t stop talking about Apple iPhone. The point is, he wasn’t allowed to. The interviewer didn’t let go.
And this is very good news for Apple. The executives of the smart-phone companies are obviously sick to death of being asked about it, but know that it’s better not to show their irritation. Very frustrating! Usually they use such interviews to push their own products. Now they’re having to defend them.
In the interview he did a quick change of course, and said that he has been wrongly accused of ‘making fun of the iPhone’ after it’s introduction, but, interestingly enough, he didn’t (or rather couldn’t) claim he’d been misquoted.
The interviewer is obviously not convinced by his arguments, nor will the average reader be.
This is the best sort of publicity for Apple.
the worst customer service experience of my life was with ATnT
You should try shipping a car from Chicago to north Idaho. I contracted with Dependable Auto Shippers and delivered the car (a ’69 Mustang Mach 1) to their terminal on Jan 28. Never received a call from them that there was any problems. On the 8th of Feb I called to learn that my car hadn’t moved. Several calls later (no return calls as requested) and today they tell me they can’t start my car and they want me to move it off their lot. They gave me 48 hours and then they start charging storage. There’s more to the story, but none of it favorable to Dependable Auto Shippers. Oh, I prepaid the shipment.