Stokes covers a litany of issues: Severe App Lack™, lost momentum, Apple’s “wildly successful” 3GS, Palm’s serious quality control problems, marketing mistakes, and more.
“When I saw the Pre unveiled at CES 2009, I was a believer. And when I spent some serious time with the device and wrote a lengthy, positive review of it, I was still a believer. But over the past year, I lost faith for the reasons outlined above,” Stokes writes. “In webOS, Palm had a great, forward-looking platform that remains superior to the competition in a number of key ways. But for all of its software advantages, developer support remains tepid, and the PDK launch at this past GDC—as exciting as the resulting games look—is too little, too late.”
“Then there’s the Pre and the Pixi hardware—neither of these phones are really able to do webOS justice,” Stokes writes. “The company simply doesn’t have the time or the cash to recover from the mistakes outlined above by doing a round of fresh hardware launches and launching a major new marketing push.
Stokes writes, “So stick a fork in Palm—it’s done, the dream is over. It’s only a matter of time before the company is acquired or goes belly up. The most interesting questions that remain are: who will buy the company? and will the buyer keep webOS alive in some form? But those are questions for others to ponder. For my part, I’m moving on from webOS with a mix of nostalgia and optimism. Android is maturing rapidly, and Apple’s iPhone remains an amazing mobile platform that will continue to evolve and thrive. It’s a good time to be a smartphone user, even if it’s not a good time to be Palm.”
Full article here.