HP Senior Vice President and Palm Global Business Unit General Manager Jon Rubinstein, formerly CEO of the independent Palm, Inc. (let’s see all that on a business card) sat down with the Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher for a chat about Palm at the Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco. The discussion was wide-ranging, touching on where Palm went wrong, where Palm is going, and how things work with the new HP overlords.

The discussion started with Swisher touching back on something that struck us as surprising from the last time she and Rubinstein were on stage: the then Palm CEO had not even touched an iPhone. Apparently that has since changed, with Rubinstein noting that many Palm employees use iPhones, and the iPhone is reviewed by their competitive analysis groups. But yes, he has now touched and used an iPhone. It’s not something that ever became his primary device, as he doesn’t “want to be tainted by another experience. I want to come at this with a fresh perspective and I think what we’re seeing now in this industry is that everyone is copying the iPhone.”

But would having used an iPhone saved Palm? We doubt it. In fact, Rubinstein admitted that though webOS and the Pre were great products, “market moved too fast and when we looked forward we saw a very clear way to where we could get the company to profitability, but we didn’t see a way to get it to scale.”

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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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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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It’s not an official commercial by any means, but it is a official promo video for the Palm Pre 2, and we like it. With some more people to it to make it more personable and relatable, this could make a decent commercial. Just by virtue of its fast cutting and up-tempo music Palm has made it clear that this sucker is fast. There’s no need for specs here, “fastest” is much easier for customers to understand (when was the last time you heard an iPhone ad touting the clock speed of the A4 processor?).

In just 34 seconds the video manages to round up everything there is to love about HP webOS 2.0: Just Type “to begin just about anything,” multitasking with stacks, Synergy calendars and contacts, notifications, apps (featuring Angry Birds, naturally), and video recording and uploading. Like we said, it’s comprehensive but very clearly gets to the point of reintroducing the public to everything that webOS can do, now "Faster, smarter, and tons of fun." Video after the break.

Source: YouTube; Via: jsgraphicart in the comments

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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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Fair warning: file this one under "Crazy rumors we can’t be sure will pan out but feel the need to share."

webOS developer Zhephree is an awesome dude and has created an awesome app with Foursquare. He’s also keen enough to check the app’s logs on webOSroundup’s Metrix, presumably to see how many users had upgraded to webOS 1.4.5 (a good portion so far, it would seem). But that’s not what stood out to him. What stands out is an entry for the until now unheard of “Roadrunner” device and a spot for webOS 2.0 in the operating system charts.

Now we’ll be the first to admit that this is the first we’ve heard of any device called Roadrunner, though with webOS 2.0 (or 1.5 or whatever) set for release by the end of the year, and presumably new hardware in tow as well, we wouldn’t at all be surprised to find that the OS and/or hardware are being tested right now. And testing popular apps on that OS and/or hardware? Also not a surprising development. In fact, we’ve seen in the past new iPhone and iPod Touch hardware first outed by similar logs from iOS developers.

There’s not a whole lot more we can read from this, though it is worth noting that Zhephree’s logs did not show any new resolutions, just the 320×480 from the Pre and 320×400 of the Pixi. We do hope that any new webOS device will come with a higher screen resolution than what we have now, and there’s something at the back of our mind screaming “640×960 Retina display!”, which could very well report itself as 320×480 without diminishing the testing experience. We’re getting into pretty dangerous speculation area here, so we’ll stop while we’re ahead.

Of course, we should note that this is the sort of thing that’s possible to fake. It wouldn’t be easy, as Zhephree notes, but it could be done by somebody deliberately hacking the emulator, changing some fairly-deep settings on a device, or even modifying the openly-available code of the Foursquare app. In his own words:

Plus, the source for foursquare is open and on GitHub. Someone with the knowledge could easily download the source, modify the Metrix JS library I have included, and force it to post to my Metrix stats with whatever string they want. Granted, it would take some effort, but it’s doable.

Then our only question would be the same one we keep asking of the developers submitting fake Flash apps to the Palm beta feeds: “Why?” So other developer type people: check your logs – is there a Roadrunner waiting there for you?

Source: Zhephree on Twitter; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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Sometimes companies like HP use their money to make problems just go away. Such is the case with Mark Hurd and the sexual harassment allegation that ended his career as HP’s CEO. In order to make Hurd’s exit as smooth as possible, the HP board lined the way with $12.2 million in cash as well as the choice to cash in more than 330,000 shares of HPQ stock (approximately $16 million, prior to the 10% plunge his exit precipitated) plus an extended option to purchase an additional 775,000 shares up until September 7.

The whole deal releases HP of any liability, but has to sting quite a bit for Hurd. Not only does he lose a job he clearly wanted to keep, but he’s also losing out on a three-year $100 million contract that was reportedly in negotiation to keep him on as CEO.

HP CFO Cathie Lesjak is serving as interim-CEO while the search for a new CEO and chairman is under way. Lesjak, a 24-year veteran of HP, has taken herself out of the running, though that hasn’t stopped her name from being bandied around. More serious in-the-running candidates include HP EVP of Personal Systems Todd Bradley; Ann Livermore, HP’s EVP of Technology Solutions Group (Enterprise); and Bob Wayman, retired HP CFO and interim CEO after Carly Fiorina was forced out. Bradley, as you may recall, was the CEO of PalmOne (the hardware division of a divided Palm, Inc) from 2001 to 2005, when he was recruited to HP by Hurd. Ranked by Fortune as one of tech’s smartest executives, Bradley is believed to have been instrumental in arranging HP’s $1.2 billion takeover of Palm.

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These are the kind of posts we love to read: an iPhone developer with zero Palm experience successfully porting his app to webOS in two and a half days. Developer Phil Hassey’s popular Galcon fleet maneuvers game has been on the iPhone for two years now and received multiple updates to bring expanded gameplay. With the advent of the PDK, porting it to webOS wouldn’t be an overly difficult affair, and Hassey was able to pull it off in less than 24 hours worth of work, and that includes unboxing and activating his Verizon Pre Plus and getting acquainted with webOS, getting into the phone with the PDK, and other first-time development tasks.

With a few tweaks here and there to make Galcon work properly on webOS, Hassey deemed it ready to go, packaged it up, and submitted to Palm’s Developer Relations Team for sale in the App Catalog. After just a few days in the review/approval queue, Galcon is now available for $2.99 for webOS users ….who have webOS version 1.4.5. Sorry Americans, the future of webOS gaming is not quite here for you yet.

Anyway, there you have it – PDK porting at its finest.

Source: PhilHassey.com; thanks to simossoft for the tip!

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What, you thought we’d let AntennaGate go so easily?

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Henk van Ess, who describes himself as a "a Dutch born investigative journalist and accidental entrepreneur" who sells MiFi cellular WiFi access points, recently took an order from Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) himself. After verifying that it was the real Woz, van Ess started an e-mail conversation with Woz about the iPhone 4 and other issues, and received permission to post the conversation on his site.

While Woz is always interesting, of particular importance to our community was his suggestions for how iPhone 4 users can deal with the unreliability of the AT&T data network: 

If you can afford it, carry a second Verizon phone for backup. Another option is to carry a Verizon mifi and rely on Skype on your iPhone. I have used this mifi technique to rescue my own, and others’, iPhones on occasion. If you buy a Verizon Palm Pre, you get free mifi on it so that is possible the best ‘compromise’ solution, to carry a Verizon Palm Pre along with your AT&T iPhone 4.

Woz continues that he has a Pre (Plus) with Verizon, and notes that "[a]t first [Verizon] charged but then they made free a built-in mifi ability (Mobile Hotspot)."

It’s great to know that Steve Wozniak is a member of our community, and we encourage him to explore his Pre Plus; it has a lot more to offer than just a free Wi-Fi connection!

Source: Mifieurope.com (via Mobilecrunch)
 

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