Palm came out with a bit of news that reiterates the old wisdom of joining who you cannot beat. The Pre will apparently be able to sync with Apple’s iTunes and iPhoto apps. Apparently, the Pre makes iTunes think it is an iPod or something. The whole thing apparently fails on the DRM side, so no “old” iTunes for the Pre then… What Apple will say to this? Well, that remains to be seen. They surely won’t be happy. But on the other hand, they will probably want to avoid any in-depth tussle over the question of their proprietary software, monopolization and all.
We also learned that, because Palm Executive Chairman Rubinstein is an old Apple hand, “the engineering culture at Palm bears some similarities to [Apple's]“. There you have it.
But the Pre is doing even better on the music front: its MP3 player includes onboard support for Amazon’s MP3 Store. Files are downloaded directly over the air to the device. Now that’s pretty cool!
More coolness comes with search: the Pre searches, and then – if you want – it searches some more, in Google, in Twitter, … Neat, very neat!
Now, on to the app store. Oops, it is called “web catalogue” at Palm. How many apps at launch? Um, “a dozen or so”… Ah…
So will it succeed? Of course it will: according to Roger McNamee, managing partner of principal Palm investor Elevation Partners, all iPhone users with expiring contracts will switch to the Pre at 4.25pm. There you have it, again!
O2 has won the exclusive distribution rights for the Palm Pre in the UK it is reported. This is noteworthy as the carrier also is the exclusive distributor for the iPhone in the country, so putting the iPhone “killer” next to the ubiquitous uber-smartphone might be a bit of a daring move? Or is it? Let us bear in mind that there are a lot of voices that caution about the operators’ for the iPhone: huge average data consumption on flat rate plans is not likely to drive ARPU. Apple managed to break the old operator model by taking chunks of the revenues realized through its devices and it does not share in any content sales. Apple does not allow anyone to put their brand onto its device (I am struggling to find any O2-related information on my iPhone, and even I think they might have taken it a bit too far… So, the Palm Pre deal actually does a couple of things:
- It gives O2 a shot at what might (or might not) be the next big thing (although analysts expect that – at least initially – sales will be much lower than for the iPhone: “Its going to sell principally into the base, to existing Palm owners and existing Sprint subscribers”).
- It allows O2 to put a little more leverage in its relationship with Apple. Having a device on its roster that has a powerful specs, an appealing interface and something like a cult following (although the cult appears to being a smaller one than the one of the Apple fashionistas) would help O2 in future negotiations.
- If (or when?) the exclusivity period for the iPhone ends (which commentators expect to happen soon), O2 would have another uber-cool gadget exclusively (I for one swapped over to O2 to get my hands on an iPhone).
So whilst few people do not know much, the combination of the above provides any number of good reasons for O2 to go for the Pre (assuming the business model agreed with Palm is not too bruising; but one can expect Palm, which has to fight its way back into the market, to be slightly less demanding than Apple), which promises to being a fairly cool device indeed: besides having a lot of all the things the iPhone has (touchscreen, multi-touch, cult following) and some more (QWERTY-keyboard) it beats Apple on home court: take Apple’s aversion to cables, the Pre doesn’t have to be “plugged” into anything; you just place it next to its touchstone charger and it charges by magnetic induction. Steve Jobs will be fuming about this one… oh, and it runs 15-20 apps simultaneously. The one question might be: which apps? But, hey, let’s see where they’ll get to…
World market leader Nokia had a bruising 2008, at least in the smartphone field. According to a study, the Finns’ market share in this segment dropped by 10% to a – well – still fairly respectable 40.8% in Q4/2008 (as compared to 50.9% a for the quarter in the previous year). Painful!
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor
(Thousands of Units)
| Company | 4Q08 Sales | Market Share4Q08 (%) | 4Q07 Sales | Market Share4Q07 (%) | 4Q07-4Q08 Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia | 15,561.7 | 40.8% | 18,703.3 | 50.9% | -16.8% |
| RIM | 7,442.6 | 19.5% | 4,024.7 | 10.9% | 84.9% |
| Apple | 4,079.4 | 10.7% | 1,928.3 | 5.2% | 111.6% |
| HTC | 1,631.7 | 4.3% | 1,361.1 | 3.7% | 19.9% |
| Samsung | 1,598.2 | 4.2% | 671.5 | 1.8% | 138.0% |
| Others | 7,829.7 | 20.5% | 10,077.3 | 27.4% | -22.3% |
| Total | 38,143.3 | 100% | 36,766.1 | 100% | 3.7% |
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor, 2008
| Company | 2008 Sales | Market Share 2008 | 2007 Sales | Market Share 2007 | Growth 2007-2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia | 60,920.5 | 43.7% | 60,465.0 | 49.4% | 0.8% |
| RIM | 23,149.0 | 16.6% | 11,767.7 | 9.6% | 96.7% |
| Apple | 11,417.5 | 8.2% | 3,302.6 | 2.7% | 245.7% |
| HTC | 5,895.4 | 4.2% | 3,718.5 | 3.0% | 58.5% |
| Sharp | 5,234.2 | 3.8% | 6,885.3 | 5.6% | -24.0% |
| Others | 32,671.4 | 23.5% | 36,176.6 | 29.6% | -9.7% |
| Total | 139,287.9 | 100% | 122,315.6 | 100% | 13.9% |
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 4Q08
| Company | 4Q08 Sales | Market Share 4Q08 | 4Q07 Sales | Market Share 4Q07 | Growth 4Q07-4Q08 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbian | 17,949.1 | 47.1% | 22,902.5 | 62.3% | -21.6% |
| RIM | 7,442.6 | 19.5% | 4,024.7 | 10.9% | 84.9% |
| Windows Mobile | 4,713.9 | 12.4% | 4,374.4 | 11.9% | 7.8% |
| Mac OS X | 4,079.4 | 10.7% | 1,928.3 | 5.2% | 111.6% |
| Linux | 3,194.9 | 8.4% | 2,675.9 | 7.3% | 19.4% |
| Palm OS | 326.5 | 0.9% | 449.1 | 1.2% | -27.3% |
| Other OSs | 436.9 | 1.1% | 411.3 | 1.1% | 6.2% |
| Total | 38,143.3 | 100% | 36,766.1 | 100% | 3.7% |
Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 2008
| Company | 2008 Sales | Market Share 2008 | 2007 Sales | Market Share 2007 | Growth 2007-2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbian | 72,933.5 | 52.4% | 77,684.0 | 63.5% | -6.1% |
| RIM | 23,149.0 | 16.6% | 11,767.7 | 9.6% | 96.7% |
| Windows Mobile | 16,498.1 | 11.8% | 14,698.0 | 12.0% | 12.2% |
| Mac OS X | 11,417.5 | 8.2% | 3,302.6 | 2.7% | 245.7% |
| Linux | 11,262.9 | 8.1% | 11,756.7 | 9.6% | -4.2% |
| Palm OS | 2,507.2 | 1.8% | 1,762.7 | 1.4% | 42.2% |
| Other OSs | 1,519.7 | 1.1% | 1,344.0 | 1.1% | 13.1% |
| Total | 139,287.9 | 100% | 122,315.6 | 100% | 13.9% |
Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
After bloody ages (and 425m Elevation dollars later) Palm came out with a bang yesterday at CES by unveiling the Pre and its new WebOS. Palm’s shareholders will be chuffed as the stock surged in the hours afterwards. Now, what is it? And does it have legs? One of the first reports (even containing a minute-by-minute live-blog of the presentation) notes that
‘its form factor is a blend of the HTC Touch and the iPhone. The software looks an awful, awful lot like that of the iPhone — multitouch, gestures and so on. Many of the apps also have a very strong likeness to the iPhone [...].”
