The third player in the modern smart phone has arrived: the Palm Pre. It has the potential to be a huge failure and be the last nail in Palm’s coffin but it also has the potential to turn into a major player.
By adopting JavaScript, HTML and CSS as its development environment they are inviting the most vibrant development community there is to generate millions of applications by cutting and pasting, the same way trillions of web pages were written.
A very interesting move for Palm is that the Pre can disguise itself as an iPhone when you plug it in your computer so that you can load it with entertainment straight from your iTunes. Apple will certainly not like that. Apple may try to go to court but that would probably put Apple closer to the anti-trust suit it’s evading miraculously. They could also start to change the protocol daily and a huge mouse and cat chase will start. Even with such difficulties, Palm’s move is probably the right thing to do, but will they have the muscle to fight Apple at their own game? on their own field?
Whatever happens, there’s a new player in the personal portable entertainment and they will surely bring new ideas to the field.
Tags: itunes, palm, pre, smart phone
As expected, Apple already broke the protocol for iTunes, so Palm Pre can’t work anymore. In my opinion Apple is looking very hard for an anti-trust case.