Palm Chooses Head of Hardware Development
Palm, Inc. has just named Todd Bradley as president of its Palm Solutions Group. This means Mr. Bradley is in charge of the company's handheld computer hardware; software, such as enterprise email software; and add-ons, such as keyboards and SD Card and MultiMediaCard expansion cards. Once the company splits off PalmSource, its subsidiary that makes the Palm OS, the Palm Solutions Group will basically be Palm, Inc.
Mr. Bradley has been the group's chief operating officer since June of last year, and will remain so. Essentially, he's been in charge of the Solutions Group since his appointment. He now has the title to go with the responsibility.
"This appointment reflects the board's confidence in Todd's leadership and recognizes him for his team's operational contributions over the last three quarters," said Eric Benhamou, Palm chairman of the board and chief executive officer.
Mr. Bradley was brought on board at a low point for Palm. The recession, the mishandling of the m500 series roll-out, and other mistakes had left the company with a huge glut of handhelds it couldn't sell. But much worse, Palm was getting a reputation for resting on its laurels. It hadn't released a truly innovative handheld in years. Mr. Bradley was brought in to help fix both of these problems.
From a financial standpoint, the company has had an almost complete turn around. Palm announced a slight net profit for its most recent financial quarter and expects to make a larger one this quarter.
Mr. Bradley's team appears to be making progress on its second task as well. It has committed to having a wireless handheld running Palm OS 5 out before this fall. The feature set for this device hasn't been announced but it seems likely that it will be a GSM/GPRS smartphone and could include new multimedia capabilities. Palm has also committed to start building Bluetooth into some of its models.
Mr. Bradley was formerly executive vice president of global operations at Gateway Inc.
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RE: Nothing new
In defense of lack of innovation. Nobody knows what the market wants, because the market doesn't want one thing. The product must span a wide range of users, and it must fit each of these perfectly. While Palm Hardware has not been leading the pack in terms of coolest features, they have made solid products which are excellent PDAs and are perfect for a great many users. I have a M505, and it has had problems, but it does an excellent job did it have an mp3 player - no, high res screen - no. did it need these to be an excellent PDA? - no
the problem is that as soon as you are not "leading the pack" with features, you no longer have the spark. People think that all your products have fallen off. Palm has always focused on usability as the most important aspect of a PDA. After that comes features. This is why PalmOS is so damned good, even on the crappy PalmIII, it was still amazingly useful. A color screen does not help you look up a phone number, or plan a meeting.
I don't know if Palm will be able to beat sony at packing in a bunch of flashy extras, sony is huge and they are churning out products left and right. But i do know that Palm trying to make better and more dynamic products will only make my world a better place. Thank god for choices.
ps. i am a sucker for flashy extras, and i do have a NR70V on order.
nategall says "blah!"
RE: Nothing new
No one argues your points about the m515 or i705 .. and Mr. Bradley wasn't brought in to make excuses for that. "Palm was getting a reputation for resting on its laurels. It hadn't released a truly innovative handheld in years. Mr. Bradley was brought in to help fix both of these problems."
Your post sounds like you are expecting a new hand held that solves these problems to happen in conjunction with Mr. Bradley's selection. The real question is "can he do it?" Time will tell .. if he's smart, he'll take a peek at the PalmOS devices that have been gaining market share while Palm branded devices have lost ground.. and perhaps apply some of that original thinking to the Palm line.
RE: Nothing new
He has been doing the job for almost a year. We now have the m705 and m515 to show for it. No innovation, nothing new. The perception that they are not innovative is still there. I stand by my original post, except for the typo.
RE: Nothing new
rest on (one's) laurels
To rely on one's past achievements instead of working to maintain or advance one's status or reputation.
lau·rel Pronunciation Key (lôrl, lr-)
n.
A Mediterranean evergreen tree (Laurus nobilis) having aromatic, simple leaves and small blackish berries
One year ago, people were waiting for Palm to go out of business. Well, that did not happen, and the company is turning around. Just wait for the fall when the ARM based Palm devices come out!!!
RE: Nothing new
And let's not forget, he's had to spend a lot of time taking a company that lost $392,074,000 the quarter before he was hired and making it into one that earned $2,948,000 last quarter.
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News Editor
RE: Nothing new
RE: Nothing new
1) Poor planning (expecting the PDA market to continue to grow exponentially while not factoring in the division of the Palm OS market by their licensees as well as added competition by PPCs)
2) The recession which hit tech companies especially hard (whose employees were probably the biggest customers of PDAs).
3) Inventory glut (brought on by #1 and #2 combined with releasing details of the m5xx series too soon).
4) Fatal flaw of their highest end unit. People still bought it and loved it, but how many more would have bought it if the m505 was what the m515 eventually became?
I think it's interesting to note that Palm did a good job of forseeing that during this past holiday season, people would not be scooping up high-end PDAs en masse and instead focused their efforts on lower end (and older Vx) devices. To me, this proves to some degree, that Palm's recent financial improvements (and the financial viability of the PDA market in general) is not dependent on introducing extremely advanced technology.
Scott
RE: Nothing new
A good example, a woman in my office is seriously wanting to get a Palm for her birthday (several of us in the office own one). Do you think she is considering Sony? No. Why, because she doesn't even realize it exists. I would bet she doesn't have the slightest clue that Palm licenses its OS.
The second thing is that she doesn't care if the PDA she gets has an MP3 player. Wants a business tool.
And this is why Palm is not going out of business. Because their product still does a phenomenal job at the basics. And when the general public think about a handheld, one word comes to mind, "Palm". This is the exact reason why M$ hasn't been able to touch Palm. People don't necessarily want their address book to play music and movies.
Remember Zoomer?
RE: Nothing new
Well, for Sony it just isn't...
RE: Nothing new ??
2. Sony always has more jokers in its hand: just consider that SonyEricsson is just introducing a smartphone with Symbian 7.0 as OS, the P 800. And yes, it is a pen based device which offers handwriting recognition, as well as GSM/GPRS and bluetooth...
A Treo killer ? Most likely.
Sony does not need Palm at all, Palm - as a competitor as well as OS license provider - needs Sony dearly. But Palm users only need Sony to maintain the hot breath in the neck of Palm -)
RE: Nothing new
RE: Nothing new
RE: Nothing new
Two items:
1) The m505 needed fixing, and the m515 did that. And the i705 was essentially what the Palm VII probably should have been.
2) If you expect Palm to move as fast as Sony, you need to get over that notion. Sony is far bigger and can do more R&D. What's more, Sony is a Japanese company, where R&D is almost a religion.
Admit it, Palm is getting back on track. They haven't yet really shown it in terms of new products, but the company is clearly moving in the right direction again.
RE: Nothing new
I admit that I heavily criticized Palm for suing Microsoft for the name "PalmPC" on their devices. (I think that's what happened, don't know for sure) But in hindsight, it was probably the best thing they ever did. Not trying to change the topic here, but Palm really is sitting in a good position with the marketplace. When most people I know think of PDA's, they either think of "Palm" or "Those Microsoft Ones". Think of how much trouble Palm could've been in if Microsoft had better market recognition with the "PalmPC" name.
I personally WANT to be on the bleeding edge. I bought handspring, I own a sony now, and I probably won't buy a Palm in the future. I'm of a small percentage. Palm doesn't need to be TOO innovative at this point, they just have to make sure they don't lag behind too far. They almost did with Handspring's expandability, and I doubt if they'll let it happen again.
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RE: Nothing new
The real question is what sort of machine would once again bring back the image of "innovator"
1. beat the best out there.
-It has to have better spec than the fastest PPC available around the time of release. That would be 400mHz Xscale with 128Mb, etc etc
2.Good design sells.
-Observe the initial rave on V, Sony's T/NR, iPOD, iPAQ.
3.Put the biggest screen in smallest package. No compromise here.
-fixed 160*160 is dead.
-grafitti area is DEAD. go virtual.
4.Multimedia capabilities sells.
-Develop the hardware and OS features for it to run exciting game and interesting multimedia package.
5. all range of model/price.
right now Palm is the low cost, ho-hum company. It doesn't have anything attractive to offer above $350.
6. wireless.
be it telephone or Wi-Fi/BT. with the application to back it up of course.
7. Standardize peripherals.
Ever wonder why Palm has such a stunted peripheral support? (keyboard doesn't count)
It's because a GPS designe for HS won't work on M505, and CF in Handera won't work in Sony, etc etc.....
8. Listen to consumer, instead of teling them what they need. (cheap, color, thin, fast, big memory, softwares that matters)
RE: Nothing new
FOR THE SLOW READERS, THIS IS A SARCHASTIC MESSAGE WHICH GOES PARALLEL TO THE M505-M515 POSTS AND THE Sony-Palm posts.
RE: Nothing new
The day organizer on steroid pretending to be more is over. Observe the deperate and failed move by Palm in enterprise application.
RE: Nothing new
Palm and the Palm OS actually dominate the enterprise in the same way they dominate consumer sales. IDC recently questioned more than 1,100 IT managers from all sizes of businesses and found that Palm handhelds outstrip all others overwhelmingly, with 60% of the companies currently purchasing Palm branded handhelds. Handspring and Compaq were in a tie for number two with less than 30%. The Palm OS platform is likewise supported by more than 60% of the companies -- which is nearly double that of any other handheld operating system.
What Palm has is a perception problem. Some people, like you I'm afraid, keep saying over and over that Palm sells only to consumers and not to the enterprise and not enough other people know that this isn't true.
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News Editor
RE: Nothing new
Well, the Zoomer _was_ way ahead of its time. And at least it had a damned D-PAD on it---which to this day, no Palm OS device has managed to integrate into the controls!! So cheap and so easy to do, yet no one's thought to do this in the ten years since Zoomer! Even rearranging the up and down buttons to the left side of the unit, and placing the address book and calendar as the "left & right" buttons would be an easy fix!
Release a few reasonably priced SD/MMC Gamecards with multiple games per card (such as Rayman, Serious Sam, Jetfighter, Zap or any other selection of other first-tier releases--not just rehashed board games and Tetris clones) and you'd have the naysayers falling over themselves to proclaim Palm as having hit the nail squarely on the head. A handheld for work AND play! What a revelation!
Palm's new commercials show M130s playing side-scrolling arcade games but no one ever stops to wonder how this is possible with the buttons which become lousier with each new licensee/generation of handheld.
RE: Nothing new
That would be November 2001.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/
view_Story.asp?ID=2628&MODE=FLAT#28426
RE: Nothing new
RE: Nothing new
For example, a Palm handheld owner shows off his device to a friend. Whats that? Oh, this is a Palm device. OK.
The friend later on decides he wants one and goes to a store, asks the sales clerk if they have Palm devices on sale. The sales clerk then gets a Palm device alongside a CLIE, Visor, etc. The uninformed buyer settles for a Palm device not knowing that the other ones are also Palm OS devices. And there you go--score one for Palm.
RE: Nothing new
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, not matter how wrong it is.
I think that I'm an informed buyer. But, after reading about the failed CLIE models (if you want to talk cases let's start with the T415), I'd never take the chance with them. Palm, on the other hand, are known for their sold workmanship, high standards and consistency. That's why their retail distribution channels are so strong - the big chains know that they are not taking a risk with Palm. With CLIE, however, you never know whether or not half the units sold in a particular line may be returned.
RE: Nothing new
And Palm never made design mistakes? Even Palm made booboos on their m505 and the USB synching problems (SUDS) to name a few. If Palm is the standard when it comes to consistency, where would you put HandEra? Heck, they've designed great devices and really did a great job of making their periphs consistent all throughout--from CF to their connector. And what about Palm? They just changed to their UC (Us Connector) that put my old periphs virtually useless for their new devices.
RE: Nothing new
Palm has done that in order to eliminate the need to buy new accessories for future Palms. The III series connector can't sync fastly with USB, and most of the peripheals either fall off the device or damage the edges. They can't continue with it forever. You'd be right if they continued to change the connectors with every new model, but they are trying to do the opposite in fact.
I think it's a good thing
bojangles
RE: I think it's a good thing
In my experience he is a tyrant who knows nothng about the handheld industry (nor do his friends that came on board at the same time). All he knows about is "moving boxes". If Bradley is in charge of innovation at Palm, Inc look out...
RE: I think it's a good thing
Just a knee jerk reaction. It can jump back 20% in the morning.
Wait a couple years and the and then pass your judgement on whether Bradley has performed or not.
Emma
RE: I think it's a good thing
Wisdom From The Past
If you have trouble figuring the future of this business, take heart. It tends to be just as confusing to "experts," who predicted events like the sale of 500,000 PCjr's.
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Nothing new
In keeping with the tradition of the first post being negative, here we go.
They still haven't produced anything innovative, and they still seem to resting on their larels, whatever a laurel is.
The m515 is what the m505 should have been, and the m705 hasn't exactly been their savior either.