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Palm unveils new phone and operating systemLAS VEGAS, Jan 08, 2009 (San Jose Mercury News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Palm on Thursday showed off its long-delayed new operating system running on a brand-new phone, its much-anticipated effort to revive its business and reclaim relevance in the fast-changing mobile industry. At a press event here, company Executive Chairman Jon Rubinstein, in one of his first public appearances since taking control of the company in 2007, introduced the new phone, dubbed the Pre, and the software, called Palm webOS. The combined effort represents the first fruits of the vision Rubinstein, who previously worked at Apple, has for Palm. The new device and software take their cues from Apple's popular iPhone but have features aimed at making the Pre easier to use. "Palm's positioned to create the best mobile device in the industry," Rubinstein said. But the Sunnyvale company, whose Treos launched the smartphone business, faces some tough challenges, ranging from a poor economy to entrenched competitors to the logistics of launching a new phone and platform. And Palm left plenty of questions unanswered, not least of which are how much the phone will cost and exactly when the company will get the device in consumers' hands. The Pre and webOS show that Palm, after seeing its market share shrink markedly in recent years, is once again vying to be a serious player in the smartphone business, said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies. But there's a limit to the number of different phone operating systems the mobile industry will support, he said. "The challenge will be to garner strong software vendor support," said Bajarin. Palm will launch the Pre on Sprint sometime before July. Sprint will offer the phone exclusively for a period of time that Palm CEO Ed Colligan declined to disclose. Palm officials also declined to say how much the phone will cost, but Colligan said it will be priced "competitively." The Pre is a touch-screen phone that will allow users to launch applications and interact with the device using gestures similar to those used to operate the iPhone, including pinching to zoom in or out and flicking to scroll. The device is shorter than the iPhone, though, and unlike Apple's iconic device, includes a physical keyboard that slides out from underneath the touch screen. Also unlike the iPhone, the Pre will allow users to run multiple applications at the same time. The operating system can represent programs as individual "cards," allowing users to easily flip between them without shutting them down, something that's difficult or impossible on other phones, including the iPhone. Additionally, the software automatically combines data from multiple sources, allowing consumers to access all of it from one application. So an address book entry might include phone numbers accessed from an Outlook database, a person's Facebook profile or their instant messaging program. Similarly, when using the phone's messaging program, users can see address entries for all of their contacts regardless of whether they are on Google Talk or AOL Instant Messenger. But success for the innovative operating system and well-designed phone is by no means assured. One potential problem is Palm's shaky health. The company lost $111 million in its last fiscal year and $42 million in the first quarter of its current fiscal year. It warned last month that its second quarter results would fall far shy of expectations. Late last month, the company got a $100 million cash infusion from Elevation Partners, the company's largest shareholder. The company faces other challenges as well, including a crowded field. The smartphone business in the United States is now largely divided among Research In Motion, Apple and phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Google launched its Android operating system last year with the eye of becoming a serious player. And the international smartphone industry is dominated by Nokia and phones based on its related Symbian operating system. Also, in partnering with Sprint, Palm is teaming up with one of the weakest of the top cell phone providers in the U.S. Sprint's market share trails far behind AT&T and Verizon. The timing of the launch will depend on when the phone is certified by the Federal Communications Commission, a process that can take months. Colligan said the company plans to roll out the Pre to international markets at about the same time as the U.S. launch, but he provided no details of what markets the company plans to pursue. Contact Troy Wolverton at [email protected] or (408) 920-5021. To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com. Copyright (c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |