Article on Palm's Fading Lifeline

Stephen H. Wildstrom over at BusinessWeek has written an article entitled “Palm’s Fading Lifeline”. Wildstrom asks:

Could the Palm Centro spell salvation for the struggling smartphone innovator that has fallen on tough times? Or is it a doomed effort to hang on in an increasingly competitive market? Palm designed the Centro to attract buyers who are younger and less affluent than its traditional Treo customers, and the new phone will probably succeed in buying Palm some time. But it may not be enough to reverse the company’s flagging fortunes.

Wildstrom talks about the Centro’s keyboard, comparing it to keyboards on the Palm Treos, saying that the Centro is a shrunken version of the Treo 755p, with a scrunched keyboard:

The problem is less the size of the keys than how close they are together and the fact that they are laid out in straight rows instead of the more natural “smile” configuration that has become standard. As if in recognition of the problem, Palm arranged for the “mail” button to call up a text messaging program—designed for very short exchanges— instead of full-blown e-mail, as on Treos.

Wildstrom also talks about how Palm made its problems worse with devoting money and development on the Foleo, and how Palm is up against RIM’s BlackBerrys and Apple’s iPhone.

Read the full article here.

I don’t think that Palm is going to die. I think that the Centro will be a great seller for Palm. And the Linux based Treos that are around the corner will certainly be a big boost. I believe that if Palm keeps making the devices smaller and thinner, with a big screen and add WiFi, and keep the operating system fresh after the Linux OS is launched, they’ll do just fine.