One the eve of Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and a day after the Palm Pre’s launch, I wanted to take some time to step back, shed some light on these two contenders and chime in with my analysis…
Ok, let’s start with the obvious: the media has been saying that the Palm Pre is the closest thing on the market that can be called anything remotely close to an iPhone-killer. Some journalists/bloggers say that in some respects, it’s better than the iPhone and yet in others seems to be lacking. I’m willing to chalk this up to a ver. 1 software release and to be fair, the iPhone had it’s share of snags (only allowing webapps, etc.) during it’s first release. However, the Palm has much stiffer competition, not only are there 40K + apps in the AppStore, the iPhone OS is going to be in its third iteration. The capabilities of the iPhone in this next release are just set to explode, here’s what hasn’t been talked about recently:
- 3rd-Party hardware/device integration (imagine hooking up an iPhone to your a video camera and taking HD video or just using the iPhone as storage, there are so many possibilities)
- peer-to-peer networking – zero configuration sharing/connection
- in-application micro-purchasing (a boon to developers, not so sure the end-users will like it, however, I’m sure the market will curb this)
- and the list goes on…
Especially with this newest update, I really think that the iPhone has positioned itself to be an device that has many purposes while from what I can see of the Pre so far, is that it is a STRONG internet/social media device…In my opinion, these two phones serve very different markets and I feel there is room for both of them. Often times, I see my iPhone as a gaming device, a camera, a computer, an internet-connected device and lastly a phone. With the Pre, I get the feeling that Palm “gets” the web and the current social media craze…however, I can’t see how the Pre can compete with the iPhone when it comes to dedicated apps (games, photo-editing software, MMOs, etc.) Not to discredit what the Pre can do, but there’s only so much that can be done using HTML, CSS and AJAX. Perhaps I’m wrong, so feel free to correct me…




