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Palm and Verizon looking to take shine off Apple and AT&T
In a minefield of failed "iPhone killers" one is making some headway on fulfilling that murderous promise: the Palm Pre. Perhaps it's no surprise: the Palm Pre was conceived by a team that includes plenty of Apple alumni, including Jon Rubenstein, who was made Palm's CEO yesterday to replace Ed Colligan. (John Gruber reminds us of one of Colligan's more famous quotes.) Rubenstein used to be the general manager of Apple's iPod division. Not only that, but Fred Anderson, Lynn Fox, and Mike Bell are all connected (if not employed by) the re-energized Palm. Valleywag's Ryan Tate says it's no wonder, then, that the Pre syncs with iTunes right out of the box. Competition is good, though, right? We'll see improvements to both the iPhone and the Pre because of the products' competitive relationship with each other. Look at the rivalry between Canon and Nikon: The result? Awesome cameras both. In the end, the customer wins. This is true with carriers, too, as exclusivity agreements begin to expire. There were rumblings that the Pre would be released on the Verizon network around Christmas, but blowback from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse pushed the rumor mill's schedule back a month to January 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal. Watercooler talk suggests that the iPhone's exclusivity agreement with AT&T expires around the same time for U.S. customers, but the Magic 8 Ball says that we might not see an iPhone for Verizon until both they and AT&T finish their LTE networks. If you're using a Pre with your Mac, especially if you're taking advantage of the iTunes sync capability, let us know in the comments how it's going.
Palm Centro eclipses 2 million mark, Colligan totally cool with that
Palm's nailed a bona fide runaway success just in the nick of time with its Centro series, hitting its second million in global sales in about half the time it took to reach the first million (thanks in no small part to a new round of carrier launches, we'd imagine). Makes sense: it's small, it's really reasonably priced for a smartphone, and while it's not stylish by any stretch of the imagination, it still manages to beat the pants off the Treo line's tired, buttoned-up look. CEO Ed Colligan's using the opportunity to thumb his nose at the competition a bit, though, and that's where we get a little worried. Instead of hearing things like "whew, thank goodness, the Centro gave us the cash infusion we desperately needed to fuel work on Palm OS 2 and a compelling product line revamp," we're seeing him spout off about how the Centro's easier to use and "less pretentious" than the iPhone, ribbing Apple over the fact that the Centro's been 3G since the beginning, and talking about how easy it is to get the 411 on your peeps with the Centro's supposedly best-in-class Facebook app. It's great to be proud of a successful product, no doubt, Ed -- but let's not forget that your most direct competitor, RIM, isn't exactly standing still. Can we trade this revelry and trash talk for even a super-brief Palm OS 2 demo, pretty please?
Palm's Ed Colligan: Foleo is the Wii of portable computing
We've seen Jeff Hawkins' -- the synaptic guns behind the Palm Pilot, Handspring, and Treo -- take on the ill-received Foleo. Now we've got the thoughts from his boss, Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm, Inc. As you'd expect, Ed toe the party line with the "mobile companion" spin. He even compares it to the PS3 vs. Wii battle, citing "technology overload" as the mysterious (and massively oversimplified) force that will drive people to Palm's new platform as it has the Wii. Ed also tells us that Palm will be providing the tools to developers after which he expects, "very quickly, there'll be thousands of applications" for the Linux-based Foleo. Hey Colligan man! We get it, but we still don't think it's a good idea. Though if only for nostalgia sake, we'd love to be wrong. See the video after the break.
