When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms which matter: Apple and Android. According to AdMob’s October, 2009 mobile metrics report, the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android phones accounted for 75 percent of mobile Web traffic in the U.S., as measured by all the mobile ad requests it tracks. That number is up from a combined 65 percent in September, 2009.
The iPhone is miles ahead of everyone else, but Android is quickly rising as a strong second. While Android phones managed to increase their share from 17 percent in September, 2009 to 20 percent in October, 2009, the iPhone and iPod Touch gained even more, going from 48 percent to 55 percent share. Meanwhile, during that same month the Blackberry ‘s mobile Web traffic share went down from 14 percent to 12 percent, and Palm’s webOS shrank from 10 percent to 5 percent (Ouch). → Read More
Amazon is running a deal on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, selling the new-ish Sprint smartphones for $80 and $25, respectively, with a two-year contract and free activation. → Read More
It’s a new day at Palm. The Pixi, Palm’s Treo-esque addition to the WebOS line-up, is getting new commercials without Miss Crazy Face and her magical Pre. Instead, you get hot people taking pictures of each other and having fun.
This is the kind of commercial that I call the McCafe (or Devin’s lifestyle in Seattle) – excited people doing something exciting. It’s a big departure from Palm and a points to a move towards the mainstream. → Read More
Get out your buying wallets because the Palm Pixi is coming to Sprint stores on November 15. Pricing details are as follows: It will cost just $99.99 with a two-year service agreement, after a $50 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate and be available at Sprint stores, online at www.sprint.com, through telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1, and at Best Buy, RadioShack and select Wal-Mart stores. To refresh your memory, the Palm Pixi is the second WebOS phone, this time with a Treo-esque keyboard. → Read More
Easily the quote of the night at Palm’s Developer gathering in San Francisco came from Katie Mitic, Palm’s senior vice president of product marketing. “We want to leave it all out there. You know, ‘The Full Monty‘,” she emphatically said when noting that Palm’s goal was to be more open.
Anyone who has seen the 1997 British film of the same name will realize that such an act would certainly be more open. But will it work?
Open Apple
If there has ever been any question as to who Palm sees as its main rival in the quest for next generation smartphone domination, just look at its ranks. The company is filled with ex-Apple employees, all the way up to the top with CEO Jon Rubinstein (who was in attendance tonight), who is the man often credited for being instrumental in the creation of the iPod for Apple. And if that’s not enough, just listen to the rhetoric: → Read More
I’m here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform.
The two, along with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein and some other executives spoke at length about the hardware, the platform, and the plan going forward. The message was pretty clear: Web development is the future, and openness is the way. They also made a few big announcements. → Read More
I’m here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform.
The two, along with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein and some other executives spoke at length about the hardware, the platform, and the plan going forward. The message was pretty clear: Web development is the future, and openness is the way. They also made a few big announcements. → Read More
Wow, it’s on. I thought that Palm was going to work out an alternate solution after that official reprimand from the USB Implementers Forum, but they’re going right ahead with iTunes compatibility again. I suppose they feel that it’s more of a crime for Apple to restrict device access than it is to spoof a device’s maker. At any rate, the conflict just got escalated. This will be remembered, 24-style, as the moment Palm went rogue. → Read More
When your smartphone drops from $299 ($199 with contract) to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team.
UPDATE from Palm: “We are not laying people off. As we continue our transformation we are better aligning our staff with our business objectives.”
The estimated sales for the Pre topped out at 375,000 somewhere in the 810,000 range (Palm reports it sold 810K units last quarter and states at least half of those where Pres) at the end of August and they went from $299 ($199 with contract) to about $79 in about eleven weeks. While this might be normal for a feature phone – the subsidy kicks in once they’re sure that the early adopters who simply must have the LG Chocolate have had their fix – this isn’t good for a smartphone that was supposed to be the lead invasion force for a new WebOS smartphone renaissance.
UPDATED with word from Palm. → Read More
So ya think that the Pre is still overpriced at $100 from Amazon, eh? Well, if you’re willing to buy the Pre at Walmart and deal with mail-in rebates, you can snag one for only $79.99. → Read More
Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from “buy” to “neutral” (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it’s those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own “iPhone killer” was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do? → Read More
The Palm Pre is coming to Germany on October 13 and will pop up on October 16 in UK and Ireland. The UK model will cost 96.89 pounds for the 75 and 600 minute plans and will be free for the 44 and 73 pound plans (1,200 and 3,000 consecutively). Other countries should be just about the same. Click through for the UK release. → Read More
Another day, another merger rumor. The once-mighty handset developer, Palm, Inc., announced an increase of its public offering of common stock to 20,000,000 shares, @ $16.25/share. This news has spurred rumors of a possible bid on Palm by the Finnish mobile powerhouse, Nokia. → Read More
Today Palm held its conference call for its Q1 FY 2010 results, during which it outlined the performance of its roster of smart phones. It’s a day that has been long awaited by investors, who are eager to see how the company’s flagship Palm Pre has actually been performing. And the results are in, sort of. Across its entire smartphone line Palm shipped 823,000 units this quarter, and its carrier partners “sold through” 810,000, of which the “vast majority” were the Palm Pre (the others were older Treos). In other words, Palm still isn’t talking.
Up until now, Palm has remained mum on the sales of the Pre — its flagship phone that launched with much fanfare earlier this summer, but was quickly overshadowed by the iPhone 3GS launch. That didn’t change today, but we can glean some information from Palm’s statements: the term “vast majority” doesn’t really mean much, but assuming at least 60% of the sell-through figures were from the Pre, that would equate to more than 486,000 units. That’s more than what some have been expecting (a Bloomberg report cited an analyst predicting 400k units sold, while a MarketWatch report put the consensus at about 500K), and Palm’s overall smartphone sales beat analyst expectations. → Read More
You get the feeling that Palm had something to hide today. On the surface that makes no sense, considering it officially announced the Pixi, the company’s second webOS-based phone, this morning. (The company’s first webOS phone, the Pre, launched to much fanfare last May, owing to an almost Bill Goldberg winning streak-like level of hype.) But as you’re already aware, Apple had an announcement or two of its own today, including the inclusion of a digital camera on the iPod nano. It’s unfortunate, but Apple events are really the black holes of this industry: on Apple event days, no other tech news can escape out into the wild. That is to say, unless your company name is Apple, Inc., you’d be better served laying low for the day, and make any announcements later in the week. → Read More
With all the excitement buzzing around about Palm’s second webOS device, the Pixi, an update to the vaunted OS quietly creeped into the handsets of those with the Pre. A gaggle of new features have been added and an even longer list of issues have been remedied. A few nuggets to be found in webOS v1.2.0 include: copy on steroids in browser and email, filtered search in email and support for Amazon MP3 over WAN. → Read More
In a move akin to Herman’s Hermits opening for the Rolling Stones, Palm has decided to announce the new Palm Pixi, a phone akin to the Palm Centro of yore in price point and features, on the very day Apple will eat up the rest of the news cycle. This is in line with the intelligence we received earlier yesterday about the Pixi launching in time for Fashion Week. The Pixi is a non-slider with touchscreen and full keyboard. It will cost about $149 with two year contract and rebates on Sprint. You have 8GB of on board storage and it takes 2-megapixel pictures – down from the Pre’s 3-megapixels. → Read More
In a move akin to Herman’s Hermits opening for the Rolling Stones, Palm has decided to announce the new Palm Pixi, a phone akin to the Palm Centro of yore in price point and features, on the very day Apple will eat up the rest of the news cycle. This is in line with the intelligence we received earlier yesterday about the Pixi launching in time for Fashion Week.
The Pixi is a non-slider with touchscreen and full keyboard. It will cost about $149 with two year contract and rebates on Sprint. You have 8GB of on board storage and it takes 2-megapixel pictures – down from the Pre’s 3-megapixels. → Read More
Palm will unveil its second WebOS phone this week, internally named the “Pixie,” we’ve heard from a source close to the company. The debut will occur as part of Fashion Week in New York.
As we wrote back in April, the new phone will have the same operating system as the Palm Pre but will be much lower priced ($99). The latest information we have on the hardware specs is here.
Palm has never verified the existence of the Pixie, but enough sources in Asia and the U.S. have confirmed the phone that there is little question it has been in the planning stages for some time. → Read More
We’ve got good news, and we’ve got not-so-good news. The good news: PhoneArena just got their hands on 6 screen shots showing off a handful of devices making their first appearances in Verizon’s inventory system. The not-so-good news: They don’t really answer any questions. In fact, they raise more questions than they answer – but we still love us a good leak! A couple of devices that have already been confirmed (or, at least, are pretty much undeniable) make an appearance; namely, the Storm 2, Touch Pro 2, and Omnia II. Outside of phones that highlight the fact that everyone is just strapping some form of “Two” onto the names of their popular handsets and calling it a day, the Samsung Convoy and two mystery Palm devices also show up: the P101, and the P121. We can assume that one is the Pre – but what’s the other? The Palm Eos, perhaps? → Read More
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