January 5, 2009 by James Oliver
Over the past few months we’ve been telling you all about the imminent arrival of Palm into the SmartPhone market. Palm are essentially betting the survival of the company as we know it on their new device which will be premiering at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. Up to now the reporting on this has been pretty much all conjecture, but now we’re finally in a position to reveal some actual details.
The phone appears to be trying to occupy the middle ground between the iPhone and the G1 Android phone by adopting both an Apple style touch screen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard like the G1. As far as the operating system, for now named Nova, goes, feedback is good. Bloggers luckier than me who have actually been allowed to play with the thing have been pretty positive.
Some have cruelly called this device Palm’s last stand. They’re right, mean, but right – the company lost $506.2 million dollars in Q2 last year as well as making huge layoffs. It really doesn’t have another failure in it. The phone is going to have to be every bit as good as its hype and probably better, especially as it is competing with three established, successful names (iPhone, Blackberry, G1).
It will also have to deal with a recession and a market that is stagnating as more and more of the narrow band of people who want/can afford a SmartPhone already have one.
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