Bloomberg Interview with Roger McNamee

Posted By: Kris Keilhack Friday, March 6, 2009 9:24:26 AM

An interesting video interview (video link) with Elevation Partners' co-founder and Palm board member Roger McNamee has been posted to Bloomberg.com. In the 6-minute interview, McNamee offers several interesting bits of insight about Palm's upcoming WebOS and the Pre. The usually casual McNamee is also snappily attired in a suit and is sporting a tidier-than-usual rock star haircut in this video.

No concrete release details for the Pre are given by either the Bloomberg TV anchor or Mr. McNamee other than the usual "first half" window. Much discussion is made of Palm's rivalry with RIM and Apple and how they all target different segments of the market vs. the traditional feature phone manufacturers. McNamee does offer that the price premium for smartphones is now "tiny", so this might offer a glimmer of hope that the Pre will not drastically overshoot the new $199 smartphone benchmark established last year by the iPhone 3G .

Another comment in the video discusses that the Pre is targeted for peple who are "busy" (as well as "incredibly busy") or "on the web", versus the iPhone's users who like to listen to music or play games. Ironically, despite Ed Colligan's previous insistence that the Pre aims for the "fat middle of the market", the always-engaging McNamee claims that he doesn't really know who is going to be the Pre's target customer, but does surprisingly suggest women as potential fans alongside the usual early adopter crowd.

McNamee also gives Apple's product line some praise for being superb media products but insists that the Pre will "run rings" around the iPhone.

McNamee does not go into any specific details on Elevation Partners' continued faith in their investment in Palm or the company's most recent grim financials. Continuing the strong strategic alliance shown at CES between at Sprint and Palm, McNamee concludes the interview by spending a fair amount of time promoting the "mature" Sprint EVDO network, ranking it ahead of Verizon's and far ahead of AT&T's.

Thanks to Gekko for the tip.

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McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

Gekko @ 3/5/2009 2:42:34 PM #

http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vTbB9DOsH_zs.asf

RE: McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

abosco @ 3/5/2009 3:24:19 PM #

"I don't know who's going to buy it."

Yeah, that's reassuring. At least he cut his hair this time so that I wasn't distracted during the interview.

In any event, he's talking about how the Pre, a device with no release date or price, will run rings around a year-old iPhone 3G. Windows 7 will kick the crap out of Mac OS 9!!
-Bosco
m105 -> NX70v -> NX80v -> iPhone -> iPhone 3G

RE: McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

SeldomVisitor @ 3/5/2009 4:16:52 PM #

Target audience = women, early adopters, busy people.

Giggle.

RE: McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

mikecane @ 3/5/2009 5:18:44 PM #

>>>Windows 7 will kick the crap out of Mac OS 9!!

I nearly spit out my appendix laughing at that!!

RE: McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

Tuckermaclain @ 3/5/2009 7:32:41 PM #

No release date or price? How Palm of them.

RE: McNamee Sees Palm Pre `Run Rings' Around IPhone

CFreymarc @ 3/6/2009 1:50:27 PM #

Who is one that said, "The loyalties of those who do consumer product reviews makes the scruples of most courtesans look very moral?"

Ladyfolk

freakout @ 3/6/2009 2:08:46 PM #

does surprisingly suggest women as potential fans alongside the usual early adopter crowd.

The ladies love them a fashionable new phone:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,24724709-23272,00.html
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 -> Treo 650 -> Treo 680 -> Centro

RE: Ladyfolk

vetdoctor @ 3/6/2009 4:21:11 PM #

Yes, the 1st woman at work showed up with hers then 2 more bought one. They like the mp3 music and surf facebook withit. they like showing off the pictures and it doesn't shout "guy" like the Treo or BB.

They don't go to PIC and comment either in case you haven't noticed.