http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Palm doesn't have to be #1...or even #3...to succeed. But yes, it's a tough market and Palm is clearly the tiniest competitor still making a go of it.

If for no other reason than Americans' passion for the underdog, shouldn't a lot of us be rooting for Palm to hang in there?]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Correct, but if executed with an ongoing campaign just as they did when the Pre launched, Palm should still have a beating pulse. Besides, Palm is contouring to their market, as opposed to "....Who needs Flash? HTML5 is just a stones-throw away!"]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
If I were a Palm Employee, I'd be 'laser-focused' on updating my resume...]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
RIM, iPhone, Android (especially Droid) all have target markets and therefore a reason to exist.

The problem with Palm is they never knew who their customers were and never targeted them with a compelling device.

Sorry guys just saying its "better than an iPhone" isn't a marketing strategy and shafting your Palm OS users wan't such a smart move either.


Palm have a choice:
1. Identify a segment and target them with a compelling handset/OS.
2. Start the cost cutting

The Rube will be heading back to the beach within 18 months and the dick-head at Elevation partners might need to take a calmative and explain to investors how they burned through hundreds of millions of their money.....

Does anyone know how much cash do they burn a month? I doubt they are cash positive, so the slightly delayed Palm death watch continues .....
.]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 12:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 12:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
And most of that $500M+ came directly from last September's stock sale ($360M), when it was priced at $16.25/stock. Can you imagine how those investors must feel right now, that the stock has drifted below $7?]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
I agree the hardware appears to be one of their biggest problems.

Palm probably thought they were taking the best hardware components from BlackBerry and iPhone and making the ultimate form factor to please everyone. Well guess what you can't please everyone, so what they ended up with was a hybrid that was not as good as a BlackBerry or an iPhone.]]>Feb 26th 2010 1:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Minor details left out of his memo, huh?

Kind of like the "debunked" OTR Global report response, huh?

Perhaps Engadget should issue a very public retraction of that "debunk" article, too?

Nah, ain't gonna happen - don;t have to do that on the 'Net.

]]>Feb 26th 2010 6:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Please do make a peeblesque 1280x800 resolution (the 800 is handy for portrait webbrowsing), oled, multitouch, sd card slot, nvidia tegra2 powered, wirelessN, webOS, and find a way to transparently run androidapps (icing on cake).
Later you can launch Pre2 with no physical keyboard, a bigger screen, and wvga res (soft keyboard makes it flexible to expand to other countries).
All of this is useless, unless you launch worldwide.]]>Feb 26th 2010 9:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/What can you say.... seems the world is on crazy pills. Iphone is a seriously lacking device compared to what's available right now but lemming people still buy because it's marketed to death. I sir, am as confounded as you are.]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/It's only lacking the features that you personally want in a phone, which obviously only represents a small number of customers. The iphone has everything that the average user is looking for, myself included. I've had many phones, palm, G1, as well as many others. I have still to find a phone that could compare to the iphone. So hate it all you want, but, women lie, men lie, numbers don't. And the iphone's numbers are shi***** on everyone.]]>Feb 26th 2010 1:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
marketed to death? Looks like you confused it with the droid! Sounds great on paper but less than mediocre implementation on reality when it comes to camera (nice resolution, poor quality), media player( worst in class), email (worst exchange integration), keyboard (barely usable physical keyboard), freezes (daily reboot)...ok the screen is nice. Note the iPhone does everything thing well. No flash? But it has the best pandora and YouTube players. No multi tasking? But it is the phone least likely to freeze and crash and has multitasking with perhaps the best inbuilt aps for web browsing and media player in the industry. Smoothest navigation and on screen keyboard? Yup. That's iPhone too!

Time to realize people buy the iPhone because it just works well. It isn't a Hummer. Phones like the Droid are purely image phones. Sort of a man's tool. ]]>Feb 26th 2010 1:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 5:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 8:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 2:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
I don't think we need an iPhone killer by any means, it has simply created an ecosystem tailored to the average consumer. The marketing is near flawless.
But I would think just like any truly successful revolution, there has to be an uprising. If the king - (iPhone) goes down, the consumer market will have to cross a bridge of persuasion that could be extremely motivating for everyone in 'the game.'
We're making so much progress, but there is so little response from the consumers as they are tranquilized by iPhones simple (accentuate simple...) brilliance.]]>Feb 26th 2010 5:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Perhaps Verizon shouldn't slap a frakin' $350 etf on the phone. Maybe they would sell a couple.]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 11:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 11:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 11:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
i agree! theres a reason why companies make phones for the gsm market because the whole world is practically on gsm!
why just made the Pre only on Sprint?? why not flood the whole damn market on every carriers in the known universe??? its as if Palm doesnt wanna win.]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 11:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
it makes monster difference.you are being USA centric. ]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
I care about GSM. I would have snapped the plam pre up in a minute if it were released here in Australia. I was even running the emulator on my PC for a while as my email client!!

It was to be my next phone after the iphone. Well, palm, to late. An android, or more likely a windows phone will be next given they are actually being released here.]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 1:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Mar 5th 2010 1:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/i didnt think of it that way, but your kinda right about it looking like a portable make up package. I wonder if Robinstein and Jobs still talk....]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Come on, the whole point of the device it that it has a keyboard. Also, if you actually test the device even the Pixi's screen is a sufficient size.]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/i dont know why you are complaining about the screen size. unless you are talking via bluetooth, a huge screen is very uncomfortable up against your ear and cheek. the HTC touch pro 2 screen is amazing but it felt like a brick up against my face. some of the earlier blackberries actually hurt too because they were too wide to talk for long periods.

i found the Pre screen to be perfect...not too big, not too small. ]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 26th 2010 12:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
The whacked-out ad campaigns are a function of a phone that had no targeted audience and no compelling reason to exist.

I agree the ad campaigns are terrible but how would you try and advertise this phone? It tried to be the best of iPhone and Blackberry and ended up being better than neither of these devices.

RIM and iPhone have clear benefits and targeted audiences.
Verizon have spent a lot of money on the Driod, and M$ are M$ so WinMo7 has a good chance. PalmOS has no clear benefit or audience and therefore no compelling reason to exist.]]>Feb 26th 2010 12:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Feb 25th 2010 10:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
I'm sure both offered them the crappiest deal ever, if they even made an offer.]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Like they had a choice?
ppft.]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/It has become very obvious that Palm might not have the resources to develop both hardware and software at a pace which can keep up with competition. It really needs to think about licensing out their OS like Microsoft. It should also really think about going to developing nations like China, Brazil and India and try to exploit those markets as those markets arent fully developed and they can get at least a mindshare of the average consumer at lower budgets.
They have and can do well in both departments but I am afraid not a pace of the competition. I think Apple really cut deep into the flesh when they sold the 8GB iPhone at 99$. ]]>Feb 25th 2010 10:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/Not just developing markets, bring it to Japan too please. By limiting the countries to mostly Roman alphabet countries, Palm is reducing it's potential to profit. I understand East Asian character sets are about 300 times more complicated to do than Roman ones but most of the work needed to be done to support them has already been done on Linux. They're loosing money by not adding them. ]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/25/palm-boss-rubenstein-sends-letter-to-employees-talks-turnaround/
Leave it up to Windows Phone 7 Series to bring the next operating system to these Asia pacific markets. It's going to be interesting the language base Microsoft includes at least then you know Japan is a given.]]>Feb 25th 2010 11:16PM