Tuesday, September 04, 2007

A very smart move for Palm

I wrote about the Palm Foleo when it was announced and I can't say I was impressed...

Today, Palm surprised me (again) with the announcement of the killing of the product. These are not very frequent events in our business, in particular when they require a 10M write-off.

However, this is the smartest thing Palm could have done at this time. Kudos to the CEO. Most companies would have committed suicide, before admitting they were wrong. They did not.

Now they can just focus on a realistic answer to the iPhone, exploiting its weaknesses. Build a next generation platform that attracts developers (and no, I do not believe Steve Jobs will announce the iPhone SDK tomorrow, sorry. I think it will be an iPod without a trackwheel but with a multi-touch screen, just like the iPhone). Beat Apple on the turf where the have been ALWAYS weak, the one that allowed Microsoft to become a dominant force.

As Steve Ballmer once said, it is all about developers. Developers. Developers.