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Even If Pre Is a Hit, Palm Is "Running on Fumes," Mossberg Says

Posted May 28, 2009 09:00am EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Mobile
Related: PALM, MSFT, AAPL, RIMM, NOK, GOOG, S

The buzz is great ahead of the release of Palm’s Pre on June 6. AllThings D co-executive editor and Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg hasn’t yet done his full product review, but he believes the phone “is in the iPhone class” – with some features that are better and some that are worse than the industry standard bearer.
 
But according to Mossberg, even a hit phone might not be enough to overcome the company’s substantial woes: a cash crunch, an otherwise depleted product line, and an exclusive deal with a carrier, Sprint, that is losing customers in droves.
 
Meanwhile, Palm has to compete against the marketing blitz of its larger, cash-rich competitors -- and not just Apple.

With the iPhone and iTouch, Apple is the "tip of the spear" when it comes to the next generation of handheld devices and what Mossberg is calling Web 3.0. The veteran tech journalist notes with awe the numbers Apple is putting up:

  • 40M devices sold in 2 years
  • 40K+ apps and 1 billion downloads in 10 months

That kind of excitement among developers, he says, hasn’t been seen since the arrival of PCs in the 80s and websites in the ‘90s.

But Mossberg does not believe Apple's dominance of the category is assured, noting the offerings of device-makers Research In Motion and Nokia, as well as the mobile efforts of tech titans Microsoft and Google. 

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