“Can Palm turn itself around by raising more cash and tweaking its strategy? I say no,” Fazil writes. “The only promise for Palm’s future is a buyout. And the only buyer that makes sense is BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.”
“RIM was the undisputed leader in the smartphone market a couple of years ago. It now faces significant threats from iPhone and Android. Its touchscreen models like the Storm paled in comparison to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Nexus One. Despite being an integrated solution, RIM has allowed its devices and OS to become fragmented. Developers not only have to account for several different versions of hardware (keyboard, touchscreen, different sizes etc.), but they also face the challenge of making sure their apps run on most or all different OS versions,” Fazil writes. “As a result, BlackBerry’s applications marketplace is struggling to compete with Apple’s App Store or Google’s Android Market. And RIM’s hopes of modernizing its OS are weakening day by day.”
Fazil writes, “Despite its weaknesses, RIM is still in a strong position, and it’s not too late to stop the downward trend.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Over 14 months ago we wrote: “Palm’s Pre dog and pony show is nothing more than takeover bait. They simply do not have the resources necessary to create another mobile platform, especially one that is superfluous. If Palm’s Pre is not a ruse, then those responsible are kidding themselves.” – MacDailyNews Take, January 21, 2009, just after beleaguered Palm unveiled their Palm Pre and webOS.
@DogGone
“It will prevent them from keeping up with the new devices that the Apples of this world are selling.”
Dude in this context, their is only one Apple of this world.
DogGone,
Oh Puh-lease, you don’t really believe that nonsense do you?
Web-os is hardly fully functional, as a matter of fact in a lot of cases Rim’s API is superior.
Neither, however, are even close to what is necessary to compete in todays market.
Palm is dead and web OS killed them, for someone else to grab ahold of that anchor chain would be uber-stupid.
The only value palm has is their patent library and at this point I am not sure how valuable that really is.
@ DogGone
> Would you say Apple buying Next was desperation?
Considering Apple had attempted and failed at doing their own next gen Mac OS from scratch (with Taligent and Pink), and had the “classic” Mac OS shimmed and propped up about as far as it could reasonably go, YES, Apple was pretty desperate. But the most valuable thing the NeXT acquisition brought to Apple was Steve Jobs, not the foundation for Mac OS X. He (and his leadership team from NeXT) saved Apple by making it profitable again several years before Mac OS X was ready for prime time.
If RIMM can’t produce a decent touch phone inside 24 months, you’d have to think they would struggle to maintain their market position. Their execs would know that and, given the Storm, they would almost certainly already be panicking.
With this sort of tech, you have to look a long way ahead. Apple bought Next in 1997, but it was at least 2002 before they had a workable desktop OS. Which is why Next was such a panic buy – Apple new they were way behind where they needed to be.
Who knows if Rimm will buy Palm. But Palm is very cheap and undoubtedly has useful tech that Rimm could use. Surely given another 24 mths development, they could come out a half decent phone?