Palm's Full Monty MG Siegler TechCrunch October 6, 2009
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 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: "Open, open, open, open." The reason Palm kept repeating that tonight is because it's the one sure weakness it perceives in Apple's currently dominating mobile application model. And Palm is hardly alone. Everyone from Microsoft to Google have taken subtle, and some not-so-subtle, shots as Apple's system. The problem with this, of course, is that Apple's system keeps growing at an ever-increasing pace. The number of apps in the App Store (85,000) is growing at a rapid rate, while the overall downloads (2 billion) are speeding up. Rubinstein announced tonight that Palm had somewhere around 125 or 127 apps available for webOS right now. And those apps have been downloaded some 7.5 million times. It's not exactly fair to compare the two stores since Palm's app store is much newer. But um, those are pretty big gaps regardless of start times. ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/palms-full-monty/ *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
