Details Leak Out About Palm’s New Nova Phone Launching At CES
Palm is expected to unveil its first device, running its new operating system, this Thursday at the big Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, and of course, there’s some minor details leaking out early. They are pretty vague, and who knows if they are spot on, but TechCrunch is quoting “a trusted source” as saying the first phone will have a full Qwerty keyboard that will slide down under a touchscreen. The new operating system is described as “amazing” and there will come with a ton of software and have media playback functions along with standard Palm calendar, email, and contact functionality.
It better be pretty “amazing” because in a San Francisco Chronicle story today, doubts are raised as to whether it is too late for Palm to release something new, given products aren’t expected to hit store shelves until mid-2009, and the company is struggling financially. Jack Gold, analyst for J.Gold Associates, said: “The bottom line is this is Palm’s last gasp. They have to come out with a new OS to make themselves relevant again. Their old OS is a geriatric case. It’s been around for a long time and has been marginally improved, but it hasn’t kept pace with the iPhone or (Google) Androids of the world.” Analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez of Global Crown Capital was even less generous: “There’s no momentum behind Palm (NSDQ: PALM). There’s really no room for Palm. If you ask new developers if they want to write for a marginalized company or a company like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), the answer is obvious.”
Posted In: Gadgets, Technologies / Formats, Operating Systems, Companies, Palm, palm
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Comments (5)
Jan 5, 2009 12:17 AM
If it’s as stable and efficient as PalmOS, I’d write for it.
Jan 5, 2009 7:56 AM
Sure, lets see the tech capabilities of Nova and their SDK and their “open sourceness”. I would write for it too, if the platform is open enough. After all, is Linux on the core, right?
I have used Palms for 10 years (but i´m not a “fanboy”), and those machines have always been excelent tools. Very responsive (better that WM), just enough software to do what i need to do (Remote Control, Office documents, PIM, book reading, note taking with Graffiti).
I just hated programming for it. Lets hope that this time is different!
Jan 5, 2009 3:32 PM
I used Palm Pilots for 5 years before buying my Treo which lasted for 2 before starting to crash repeatedly.
I’ve been a fan of their stuff for a long time and find it sad that such a great company has made so many blunders as of late.
The more competition for Apple, Google, and Microsoft the better for all of us. I hope they introduce something better than good. They need to hit a home run after their string of failure mixed with minor successes.
Jan 5, 2009 7:03 PM
Linux will be the key and will turn heads in the first wave. If in this first wave Linux apps start connecting the PDA to various applications on servers they will get traction. Then, if there’s a coolness factor which is possible since the chief Engineer is from Apple, watch out. I believe the Blackberry Storm will fail leaving room for Palm to compete against Samsung.
Jan 6, 2009 11:38 AM
cant wait to see this will turn palm around very quickly