March 9, 2007
John Markoff writes in The New York Times (registration required) that Palm has brought on former Apple engineer and Pixo founder Paul Mercer to work on “a new line of products”. The Times’ take is that this is in direct response to the iPhone. This could well be correct, or it could be the long-awaited “third category” of product to spring from Jef Hawkins’ mind. It’s certainly wise to take any new competitive threat seriously, particularly one from a company with the design expertise and marketplace momentum of Apple, but I find the Times’ characterization of “shaking up the cellphone industry” premature despite Apple’s claim of handset reinvention.
In any case, what needs shaping up is the Treo form factor, which appears on the shelf as a chubby Blackberry alternative. Treo pressure is coming from the sudden wave of popularity enjoyed by cheap Windows Mobile smartphones such as the Q, Blackjack and Dash. Differentiation from these workalikes is more important than matching the iPhone’s new directions.
March 6, 2007
Forbes runs through the usual suspects in terms of which company is best-positioned to snatch up Palm, which has met only with busy signals in its quest to find a permanent owner. Nokia seems to be the mindshare front-runner but I’d be surprised if the global market share leader broke with its strong Symbian support. Besides, like Palm, Nokia has taken heat for the relative girth of its handsets.
In fact, I don’t like the fit for any of the big handset guys. However, HP would be a complementary new owner. HP understands platforms. Unlike Dell with its channel conflict dilemma, HP is already in the smartphone market. And HP has a strong digital lifestyle position from which it could scale down the Treo platform, accelerating the path Palm is already on and must must pursue to compete with inexpensive smartphones from Samsung, RIM and others. Garnet OS and Windows Mobile also still retain strong PC ties — which makes sense for HP. In short, Palm would round out HP’s “three screen” strategy.
March 2, 2007
I missed this story a few weeks ago about miniature hard disk maker Cornice allegedly losing investor interest, but it’s not surprising. The iPod nano replacing the mini was the milestone in the demise of the 1″ and smaller hard drive for portable products and of course flash price-performance improves constantly.
Seagate and other manufacturers put on a brave face about hard drives continuing to reign where maximum capacity or best price-performance is key, but in a few years the SSD is going to be as strong a competitor in the laptop market as flash is now in the digital audio player and — more significantly — cell phone market.
Today I need a relatively large hard drive to store my digital music collection, but flash price-performance is growing faster than my music collection is.
This week Sony unveiled more of its lineup for 2007, including a number of traditional audio products such as boomboxes and a variety of shelf systems that can use Bluetooth to stream audio from a cell phone or Sony Network Walkman. Bluetooth has also been shown as an option for Sony’s digital media port on its receivers and new Bravia (nee DreamSystem) home theater systems.
It’s good to see Sony getting a jump on Bluetooth for home A/V integration. The company arrived late to the iPod speaker dock game, ceding much of that market to the likes of Bose and Altec Lansing, but has an opportunity to capitalize on A2DP Bluetooth audio. Bluetooth is a standard, of course, but implementation of it has had a disproportionate share of incompatibilities. A cheap example is the Fossil/Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Caller ID watches, so there’s room for optimization, particularly with Sony Ericsson mobiles.
Since Bluetooth audio is streamed, it avoids some of the messy DRM file transfer issues on memory cards. Meanwhile, the memory card format wars have reached detente, with Sony supporting SD in more products such as the PlayStation 3, Sony Reader, and of course Vaio PCs.
Speaking of Bluetooth stereo audio, I believe Apple will support it in the iPhone even though it has been reluctant to do so in the iPod. The competition here is too great and Apple has traditionally executed well on standards such as USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in Macs. Consider it another carrot for today’s iPod user.
Out of the Box had a day or two of downtime due to some plug-incompatibilities with a WordPress upgrade. We have found and terminated those responsible (the plug-ins, not the people) and apologize for any inconvenience.
