Digitimes reports that in order to boost sales and clear inventory due to weaker than expected demand, Android, webOS and QNX tablet makers are planning across-the-board price cuts by the end of September.
We don’t see it as much of a surprise that the tablet prices will be falling about six months after launch, [...]

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Though many have jumped on the tablet bandwagon with devices like the successful Apple iPad, 99.7% of the world’s population still has not seen the need for a tablet and therefore have not purchased one to date.
The research was conducted by RBC Capital Market analyst Mike Abramsky who managed to create [...]

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CES 2011 is just a few weeks away, and we’re all assuming (and hoping) that Palm announces some awesome new devices to replace the aging hardware that’s out there right now. At this point, given the current marketshare numbers, what might be needed more than the new hardware is a new consumer mindset pertaining to Palm.

According to the latest numbers from Nielsen, Palm’s marketshare stands at a paltry 1.3% in the United States, and we’d reason that international marketshare is around that, if not lower in countries where Palm products are even available.

With Palm’s market penetration so low, the question weighing heavily on our minds right now is how do Palm and HP turn around their fortunes with webOS – especially if we need to wait some time for new hardware? The answer lies not with rebuilding marketshare. No, the answer is to reboot the public perception and start over. webOS is a fantastic operating system, but it was already fighting an uphill battle against iOS when it launched, and has since been eclipsed by Android and is facing competition for the bottom rung from, of all companies, Microsoft with their turn-the-smartphone-OS-on-its-ear Windows Phone 7.

In this mess of smartphone operating systems, how is Palm to differentiate itself and make the case for why Joe Consumer should buy a webOS phone over an iPhone or Droid? Reboot, reset, and start over. Palm needs to be aggressive with their advertising. It can’t be “We’re still here.” No, the message must be “We are here. This is why we’re awesome.”

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The October smartphone OS numbers are in, and not everyone is pleased. The statistics from comScore measure the change in U.S. smartphone OS market share from July, 2010 to October, 2010. Google’s Android is the big winner, while RIM’s BlackBerry continues to falter.
Android has continued its ascent, going from 17% to 23.5%, which amounts to [...]

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Nielsen has released their latest survey numbers on the smartphone market, and it seems that the pace of smartphone adoption is quickly accelerating, with 29.7% of US mobile phone owners having a small computer in their pockets. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Also not a surprise: the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and Android phones are dominating the smartphone space, snagging 27.9%, 27.4%, and 22.7%, respectively. Even Windows Mobile devices (yes, we’re talking old school Start menu Windows Mobile) stand at 14% in the survey, while Symbian accounts for 3.4%, generic “Linux” for 3.3%, and bringing up the rear is Palm (webOS and old school Palm OS) with a paltry 1.3%.

To put that into perspective, for every one Palm owner there are 21 iPhone users, 21 BlackBerry addicts, 17 Android owners, and even 11 Windows Mobile users. Heck, there are 2.5 times as many Symbian users in the US than there are Palm, and Nokia has notoriously struggled in North America.

All this begs the question: what is HP going to do to turn this around? CES is around the corner, and we’re hoping that Palm manages to pull out all the stops with the new hardware releases really needed to prop up the awesomeness that is webOS 2.0 (and maybe some wishful thinking, but we’d like to see a big splash with a feature-packed webOS 2.1 too). At this point HP and Palm are going to need a big splash, essentially rebooting the consumer mindset as it pertains to webOS and Palm. It’s becoming clear that Palm isn’t even in the conversation for most people.

Source: Nielsen; Via: Android Central, Engadget

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HP executive Jon Rubinstein sat down with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs at the Churchill Club last night, to discuss the future of mobile technology. Rubinstein practically conceded the first top two spots in the battle amongst operating systems when he was asked to rate the current crop available. After admitting that iOS and Android are [...]

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The smartphone industry’s rapid adoption seems to be going on and on and, at least for the time being, the end of this growth is not on the horizon. This is not much of a news itself, but taking a closer look at the picture reveals some impressive stats that give a hint where the [...]

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If the question “What platform do you see yourself developing for in 12 months?” had been posed a few months ago, the responses for webOS would have plummeted through the floor. But with the power, scale, and enormous bags of cash of HP at Palm’s back, it turns out that developer interest has turned around. In fact, it’s a doubling of interest, though that’s not saying a lot when you were standing at 3% current interest (dead last).

The doubling to 6% ties webOS with Symbian for one-year-out developer intent, but it pales in comparison to Android (up 56% to 61-out-of-100) and of course iOS (still leading with a resounding 82%. Interestingly, it appears that developers are looking to expand their reach across multiple platforms, with interest in HTML5, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, and even Symbian up. The only platforms that are staring down the tunnel of declining developer intent are Java and Flash, which comes as little surprise to us. Now all we need is some kick-ass hardware from Palm and some gangbusters sales to get devices in hands and developer interest up.

Source: GigaOM; Thanks to Jimmy for the tip!

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If the most recent ChangeWave report is any indication, HP and Palm have their work cut out for them in the market of public perception. According to their survey of prospective smartphone buys, 0% (or at least significantly less than 1%) of respondents indicated an interest in buying a webOS product. That’s in spite of the fact that more webOS users reported being “very satisfied” with their device than BlackBerry or Windows Mobile (both of which garnered more potential customers). Meanwhile, interest in Android has risen to the point that 37% of those surveyed were going to the green machine, while 38% wanted an iPhone in their pocket.

HP’s executives seem to understand what they’re up against. At the recent HP analyst event, HP Personal Systems Group Executive Vice President Todd Bradley dropped a delightfully crunchy line: the Personal Systems Group (under which Palm falms) is going to “aggressively attack” the smartphone market. On the other hand, Bradley indicated that the size of the App Catalog has doubled since July 1, though our own tracking indicates growth of 50% in that time. Don’t get us wrong; 50% growth is tremendous (that’s 1550 new apps since the start of July), but we’re not going to stretch that to a “doubled.” We’ll just chalk it up to a PalmPad-style slip-of-the-tongue.

We certainly hope that aggressively attacking includes strong carrier partnerships, serious and widespread advertising, and a quality line of diverse, powerful, and desireable webOS products. Otherwise, well, we can’t see consumer interest in Palm ticking up otherwise.

Source: Investor Place, CNET

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Hey HP, we know you’re pretty pumped to released a webOS-based tablet, but you should know that you’ve got some serious competition and it’s not just from the folks in Cupertino. As CrackBerry is liveblogging right now, RIM has just announced the BlackBerry PlayBook and it’s a 7", 9.7mm thin, dual-core processor-packing, multitasking, 1080p-displaying, 3D-game-playing monster.

It runs a new OS RIM is building off QNX and it supports Flash so completely that Adobe Air is the platform of choice for app development (along with BlackBerry, ‘WebWorks,’ Java, and more). To add insult to injury, as you can see above it can sync up with BlackBerry Smartphones ala Palm’s original Foleo concept. App switching in the new "BlackBerry Amplified" interface also looks a lot like app switching in webOS.

The excitement in BlackBerry camp is awfully high right now. Your move, HP / Palm.

See the BlackBerry PlayBook video at CrackBerry.com

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