Last week witnessed the end of an era as Hewlett Packard announced its intent to purchase the beleaguered Palm. Engadget did a story with their take on the new Palm logo (seen at the right). I think there are three primary lessons the industry can learn from the demise of Palm.
The first lesson is nobody is big enough to not fail. Unlike in the financial sector, in the mobile handset environment no company, no matter what success they have had in the past is safe. It’s hard to realize at this point in time that Palm essentially invented what we all know as the smartphone today. Few in the industry would argue that point, but here we are 5-6 years later and Palm has been experiencing a descent into the depths for the past 3 years. In 2004 it would have been as unimaginable to think Palm would fail, as it would be to think Apple would fail today, and yet here we are. Nobody is safe in this world.
The second lesson is to innovate or die. Palm, was once on the top of the heap with the most sophisticated, and yet easy to use, handsets on the market. They had a smaller, but no less enthusiastic following than Apple has today. I’m not sure why it happened, but somewhere around 2007 Palm quit innovating. Oh, I imagine in the labs they were working on new ideas, but they weren’t seeing the light of day. From the time they came out with the Treo 600, clear up through the Centro, there was nothing really new with the Palm handsets…a little more memory here, a smaller form factor there, and a few bells and whistles, but nothing significant to speak of. Unlike Palm, Apple just recently announced a completely new mobile device with the iPad. On the surface it might seem like a giant iPhone, but in fact at MacroSolve are already starting to develop entirely new business applications for the iPad. There’s no rest for the weary in the mobile handset market.
The final lesson is that applications are key to success. While Apple may have introduced the App Store concept, it is no longer unique to Apple. Android already has over 30,000 applications on Android Market, and it’s market share is rapidly climbing. BlackBerry is struggling to get much traction with applications. Last I saw there were under 5000 apps in BlackBerry App World. That’s not much for an app store that has been in existence for just over a year. Interestingly, while BlackBerry is the clear leader in smartphone market share, their market share has been slipping over the last several months. While there are many variables that play into market share in this market, I’d suggest the number and quality of applications available is one key variable.
So, if you’re a smartphone maker three things are worth focusing on:
- Don’t grow complacent no matter how great the accolades,
- Continue to innovate on new device ideas and capabilities, and
- Whatever you do, make sure you have a healthy, happy, and growing developer community.