Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Last Saturday I was one of the first group of consumers to buy a Palm Pre, the new smartphone by Palm that has gotten a lot of buzz lately.  A lot of that buzz is positive, but inevitably in the majority of articles about it, the Apple iPhone is mentioned.  That makes sense, since the iPhone has become one of if not the most popular smartphone.  Also the guy who designed the Pre, Jon Rubinstein (who also just became Palm’s CEO), was a big part of the iPod’s success when he worked at Apple.

Still, I think the comparisons are a little unfair even if they have to be uttered, especially when it comes to the Palm Pre’s App Catalog.  The catalog was launched with only 18 applications and now has 30.  Almost doubling the number of apps in a week isn’t too bad, but this compared against Apple’s current App Store of 50,000 applications makes the Pre’s selection look pathetic.

The problem is that the comparison is between a phone that has just come out, and one that’s had time to mature.  Of course that IS what the choices are right now, but I guess what I don’t understand is why Palm is expected to have as mature a marketplace (or anything even close) as the iPhone’s on it’s first week out the door.  Here are a few points to this end that I think the current press is ignoring about the Pre:

1. The iPhone had no app catalog period (not 18 apps or 30) for the first year of its existence.
2. The shear number of applications for a phone doesn’t mean all that much.  To be sure, the App Store has a great selection of useful applications, but if half or more of these apps are iFarts, how useful is that total number?
3. If you were a developer, is it a “no brainer,” as Leo Laporte said, to develop for the iPhone vs the Palm Pre?  Well, in one sense you might think it would be - you have a proven platform and an established marketplace for your product.  On the other hand, you have 49,999 other apps to compete with.  For those with the resources, the obvious choice will be to develop for both platforms, but for those who don’t, wouldn’t you be much more noticed in a smaller collection of apps?
4. So many of the articles that I take issue with are trying to couch the Pre and the iPhone as being in some kind of mortal death match where only one company can win.  According to these articles, Palm needs to be as good as or better than the iPhone in every way in order to prove itself and go head to head with the iPhon in order to “survive.”  But is that really true?  I don’t think so.  All they really need to do to survive is to produce a successful product - one that sells well, generates increasing interest over time, and slowly grows in marketshare.  Whether a future Pre will ever get close to the iPhone in sales numbers is doubtful, but why is this necessary?

The Smartphone market is growing every year, and they still take up a relatively small percentage of total phones sold, which means plenty of room for all manufacturers to grow.  It’s actually better for consumers to have more choices.  Some authers seem to think that having more than a couple of platforms of phone OS will lead to chaos and confusion.  Yet on the PC side we have Apple, Windows, and Linux.  In the automibile industry there are lots of different “platforms” - SUV’s, compacts, minivans, motorcycles, sports cars, etc.  No one is confused, rather people are happy to have more choices, not fewer.  Competition makes these companies work harder to make better products for all of us.