Palm whose name was once linked with handhelds as ubiquitously as Kleenex to tissue, looks like it is finally taking its last breath.  As pathetically as Palm, once the owner of the handheld device segment, has grown over the last five years, the current economic downturn looks like it will finally nail the coffin shut.

Palm has announced that it is cutting an unspecified number of jobs from its 1,050 person workforce.  The layoffs came after Changewave released figures on Thursday showing that a mere five percent of companies planned to buy Palms for their workforces, half the number of last year.

Meanwhile Rim is looking at sales of 78 percent to the enterprise market and Apple’s iPhone will be bought by 22 percent of companies.  Of course, this all depends on how many of these companies survive the current troubled economy.

The Palm reputation was still strong enough to lure two high profile figures from Apple, Chairman John Rubinstein and Senior Vice President Mike Bell.   After working in Apple product development, they needed a real challenge.

Palm has been essentially in a holding pattern for the last five years waiting on the release of its next operating system that was due to be unveiled years ago.  Supposedly, the operating system is ready to be released by the end of the year but does anyone really care?

In the intervening years, Palm has fallen into the realm of has been innovative companies just this side of the Edsel automobile.  It was the little company that could, that was able to succeed with handhelds in way that both Apple and Microsoft were not in the mid to late 1990’s.  The Palm Pilot became the name of any handheld device that was carried. 

Palm was on the cutting edge and released a new handheld several times a year with updated software.  More programs existed for the Palm than for any other handheld device on the market and then Palm announced that it was working on its next big leap in software, cobalt.  Everything screeched to a halt.

Palm split in two and sold off its software division and nothing innovative has been heard from them since.  Meanwhile Microsoft continued to develop its software and products leaving Palm sitting in the dust.

Also a little known Canadian company called Research In Motion (RIM) developed a kickass little device called the Blackberry that more than filled the void left by Palm.  RIM swept in and took the enterprise market by storm and has since begun to branch out into the consumer market.

Apple developed its own kickass device called the iPhone and has been gaining market share ever since.  Apple has taken over the touch screen market that Palm once had sewn up before it took a detour to nowhere.

If Palm really has new software ready to unveil and a new device ready for early 2009, both better be innovative and unique, because Palm is on its last gasp.  Unlike the old days when the media flocked to Palm release parties and announcements, Palm barely gets mentioned.

Should Palm’s software prove that the five year wait was worth it, it would be a miracle.

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 12:35 pm under Cell phones, Opinion.

Read more entries by Susan Wilson.
Stumble It!