The venerable New York Times has seen fit to print an analysis of Palm's and Sprint's prospects with the new Pre. The article appeared in print editions March 22, after an online version showed up in the paper's web edition March 21.
My favorite part of the article:
"The Pre is a bet-the-company product," says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.
A Palm spokeswoman said it is not the Pre, but Pre's new operating system, WebOS, that is the bet-the-company offering. Palm plans to introduce additional products for WebOS, but has not announced any specifics.
Written by Randall Stross, the article looks at Palm's missteps in underestimating the impact of Apple's iPhone and cursorily examines Sprint's precarious predicament. It's way worth a read, but much as I love the Times, the author missed a couple of points:
The iPhone debuted, everyone whined, on a slow and poor network – AT&T, formerly Cingular, even more formerly AT&T – and succeeded anyway. Sprint's network is much faster as the outset, and the company even claims better coverage in more metropolitan areas (temporarily, says AT&T). So, better network, nice Pre phone features. Watch out, iPhone.
And second, those "other devices" with WebOS might be more appealing to more people than the Pre itself, as well as coming in at a lower price point.
