Remind HN: webOS Announcement Today
palm.com
palm.com
Lots of geeks and non geeks would be willing to give a device a spot in their lives that doesn't displace their current mobile phone. Given the current state in the US, we're overwhelmingly tied to 'contracts' and steep monthly fees. The threshold any device needs to meet to displace our current devices at any given time is huge.
However... many people are willing to plunk down $150+ for an iPod Touch - which is for most purposes an iPhone with no phone, which also means no contracts, carriers, monthly fees, etc. If you like it, great! If not, it'll make a nice gift for some family member or friend. The barrier to trying one out is much lower.
Regardless of the initial price ("free phone!") most of us now understand that any "mobile phone device" we get is going to cost us $500-$1000/year for multiple years. Playing that game is way too costly - the stakes are too high - the carriers have no real incentive to push you 3 months from now when the next model of something else is 'new'. iPhones have been the exception to all this, and betting your company on being the next disruptive exception was/is foolhardy (Palm pre-HP).
Apple already proved there's a large market for wifi-only devices - let's hope HPalm's new webOS devices offer sanely priced wifi-only options.
Apple has shown that there's a decent market for modern PDAs like their iPod touch. However, it's a bit harder to make something like an iPod touch due to the lack of subsidy. The iPod touch lags behind the iPhone because of that. The new iPod touch's display doesn't have IPS, it's rear camera is a paltry 1MP, etc. I'm guessing Apple's margins on it are probably lower too. Plus, I feel like I should point out that the iPod touch starts at $230, more than 50% over your $150 mark.
I think the smartphone space is a logical place to start. There's a reason why HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola have all created great Android smartphones and have left the PDA space to Apple. I'd love to see more devices without a monthly recurring charge. However, I think the smartphone space is a lot more profitable and I don't think that Palm had the ability back then to move against Apple's iPod touch. With HP backing them (and if HP is willing to risk it), they probably have the resources to try.
*Palm also hitched their wagon to Sprint which was, at the time, haemorrhaging customers. Verizon customers waited for the Droid line, T-Mobile customers already had Android devices, AT&T customers already had the iPhone, and Sprint customers probably knew that Palm wasn't going to create a second platform against Apple when Apple was on a more popular carrier and was, well, Apple. If Palm had been non-exclusive before the Droid, Droid Eris, and Hero came out, they might have done a lot better. But they thought they could do what Apple did and force users to a specific carrier - with the exception that Apple was forcing customers to the #1 or #2 carrier depending on the quarter while Palm was trying to force customers to the #4 carrier (based on net adds before their devices came out).
EDIT: Think about it this way: Apple is charging $200 for an iPhone with contract. They're charging $600 without a contract. There's a $400 difference there that AT&T is covering. Now, one could argue that Apple was trying to charge more for the no-contract phone, but really Google is selling the Nexus S no-contract for $530 so there's still a $330 difference. Anyway, a 3G radio isn't costing them $300-400 to add to the iPhone. The economics of high-end smartphones are more appealing than PDAs and that's a big reason why the Android manufacturers aren't paying much attention to it compared to what they're doing for phones.
The huge sales of the touch at $230+ make my point even more, though, in many ways. People are OK with spending a moderate amount of money on a decent device. We can't be expected to drop everything for the next 'mobile device' that requires 2 year contracts all the time. Yes, tech bloggers and a few ubergeeks can do this - most people can't and won't.
"There's a reason why HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola have all created great Android smartphones". I think it's because they're basically lazy and unimaginative. Having Android dropped in their lap means they can ride a bandwagon without having to spend as much on R&D - they can use that money for even more invasive "nascar/nfl" licensing deals to put non-removable widgets on the device homescreen! (yes, I'm more than a bit cynical about this).
I had had high hopes for Palm with the webOS was first launched, but saw them trying to play the 'me too' game by only offering mobile phones, which are tied to carriers, and bring a huge baggage with them - legions of people who will never leave or never use particular carriers.
It's all water under the bridge now, but if anyone had the ability to redefine the PDA space, it was Palm, if only because of the legacy of the name. Well, that tied with the relative boldness of webOS - I wanted one, but I didn't want to have to tie up thousands of dollars and years of my life with a particular company.
FWIW, I have done that with AT&T/iphone, but relatively late in the game, and opted for it only after I realized how poorly the pre was going to play out being tied to sprint. I occasionally travel overseas and couldn't deal with CDMA only, and also already had some family on AT&T and the 'free minutes' thing tipped the balance.
Wow, I totally missed that, and I have a 4G iPod (my first Apple product). Apple must have evaded this fact really well; I assumed that those specs are the same as in iPhone. How did you know that?
Developing for webOS is a lot like developing Flex applications (which I had done previously), except the API is way less complicated than Flex's API, and it's all in HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I had a set of posters with all of the Flex objects/events/methods and it was seriously 3 posters worth of 9pt text.
I was really happy to hear that webOS was given new life at HP, because I had a really nice time developing for it and I was hoping that it would get some traction so I would have a reason to develop for it for real.
1. Is it priced competitively (base model between $400 and $600)?
2. Does the software fit the form factor (unlike current Android tablets)?
3. Is its hardware up to the task (not in terms of specs but in terms of “snappiness”) and does it have competitive battery life?
4. Will it be available immediately or very soon?
Some of those questions will be answered today, others only later in reviews.
1. We don't know yet
2. Yes, it looks really nice on a tablet size device
3. According to the demo it is (although an independent review would be better)
4. "This summer", or "No, it won't".
4 is the real bummer for me. Again the Pre-alike "We got something cool, _wait for it_" attitude..
Normal people don’t buy a new phone every year.
We'll see =).
I'm interested to see what they came up with in tablet form.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/live-from-hp-palms-think-...
Times zones make my brain hurt.
The Google results for time zone conversion tools are spam filled and suck. I always give up quickly and do the conversion in my head. I’m going to bookmark this and hope that I don’t find myself in similar situation the next time I have to deal with time zones.
Hmm it works for me:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110124 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.14
At least, I can manipulate the time okay. If there is a way to make it revert to current time (without loading the page), I don't see it.