Will Palm find a new lease of life at CES?
Palm has the gadgets blogs abuzz with news of it unveiling a surprise at CES. Will Palm finally be able to reclaim its status as a smartphone innovator?
TreoCentral.com’s already displayed the invite, which only hints at what’s being shown. The teaser is that there’ll be ‘Palm New-ness’. Apart from the fact they need new copywriters, there isn’t much going on here. The best guess here is that Palm finally has a new device that isn’t as disappointing as the Centro.
Yes, budget phones are all well and good but Palm needs something spectacular. This is, after all, the New Age of the iPhone, where smartphones have never been sexier.
Some think it might be a new Windows Mobile device, one reputedly code-named Roteo. Its Linux OS still has yet to get off the ground, with Google’s Android stealing much of the thunder.
It’s sad that a company who made smartphones business essentials with its Treo range, is now easily yielding to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerries.
When did Palm start losing its way? Perhaps it was when it stopped focusing on smartphones and went on wild flights of fancy with devices like the shelved Foleo.
Palm had a winning brand with the Treo name, which now looks as if it’s been squandered. Its association with Windows Mobile probably was profitable, but not enough to buoy its prospects.
But in happier news, there’s a contest going on at the official Palm blog: http://blog.palm.com/palm/2008/12/celebrate-with-palm-in-las-vegas.html. Think up a cool caption for a custom xkcd strip and you might just be visiting Vegas, to see what the New-ness is about.
Nice job, Palm, at tapping geek culture with using geek strip xkcd. But coolness and geekery won’t be enough to save you. An uber-cool device, though, probably might. So let’s hope the new Palm device satisfies the desires of the Treo faithful.
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