Palm Is Back ??

While everybody is getting excited about the iPhone, in the market Palm seems to make a come back. Since its introduction of its Palm Centro series in September last year, the company today has reached 1 million sales mark with this product.

This is wonderful. With palm software simplicity (especially compared to the Windows mobile complex and confusing menu structure), and great pricing point of $99, this is really an alternative internet-phone to go.

My guess is the mobile-internet world market is going to be even more exciting pretty soon. Consumers will soon see various generations of internet-ready mobile devices from Apple (iPhone/iTouch series), HTC (Windows Touch series), Palm (Centro series), and probably Samsung (Android series).

The symbian group of companies will have to prepare a solid response to this, I guess. If not, then the next exciting battle of mobile computing will be lost.

For all these handset/mobile OS/mobile infrastructure provider, key element to win -- or at least -- survive in the upcoming internet-mobile competition would be:

• Can they provide powerful yet simple and appealing mobile user interface and user experience?
• Can they provide powerful and complete mobile internet computing infrastructure?
• Can they provide powerful, seamless and easy to use mobile computing API? (online & offline mode)
• Can they provide powerful, complete and easy to use multimedia content repository?

These are the essential ingredients required to survive.

• iPhone seems definitely ready for that. Their touch interface and software interface -- not to mention their superior hardware clamsell -- is superb.

• HTC touch seem to have a great start. Although -- again and again the lauzy (and complicated) Windows Mobile infrastructure beneath it is really a pain to embrace.

• Palm seem to have a chance, but its overall "old looking" GUI approach probably need to be beefed up a bit so it resonate more fresh modern interface. (The current interface can provide complete functionality, but it really feel like using simple applications of the "80s").

• Symbian has some interesting interface, but overall its  complicated SDK and C programming interface might shy away developers from them -- if they can not fix these soon. Their current 'best" bet today (while initiating major transition to their SDK structure), probably is to rely on the web as their greatest mobile computing interface!

• Android seem to be a great potential contender to Apple iPhone. But this remain to be seen. When Samsung and the Korean manufacturer come up with a great, workable model for this, there are a lot of reason why the Symbian manufacturer has great reason to be afraid.

Overall, there would be great battle ahead. While everybody is now getting totally excited with "touch-based" interfaces, my guess in the future is this: the one that can provide the most seamless pen + softkeyboard + touch interface is the one that's gonna win.

Why do I say so?

I think it's simply because, as we use and live the internet everyday, there would be more and more activities that we would like to do with it. Consequently:

• We are not just gonna browse on something (where touch interface is best for browsing), but we are also going to annotate and/or write something on it (whereby the pen and type interface is the best for it).

• We are not just gonna take snapshot on something (where touch interface is best for example for photo taking and photo manipulation), we are also going to comment and put granular effect detail on it (whereby the pen and the typing interface is probably still the best for it -- after all pen is more adequate for precisise operation than our "larger size" finger).

It is fascinating to see how the future of mobile computing would be. If Palm can build again on their recent "come back" success with their Palm Centro, and can beef up again their UI and leverage the strength of their pen-computing interface and infrastructure, then the future would become even more interesting.

Today Palm is commanding 1 million unit sales (since the first launch and introduction of Centro in September 2007), HTC Touch is  reaching 2 million unit sales (really not bad for a clunkier Windows OS at the bottom), and iPhone is reaching 4 million unit sales (which is truly perfet).

But the future is remain to be seen, if Palm can leverage on their "long historical rooot" (seamless - easy to use user interface, great pen-computing interface, low-price Zire computing infrastructure) and can best fit it again for the future, the market might be heading forward for a very very exciting future.

As for Palm devices that is using those clunky Windows OS? Oh forget it! Why putting complexities inside (once) a great device, if your own OS will do better?

The era for Windows mobile -- if Windows mobile still keep it's current tangling interface and really messy mobile computing infrastructure -- is over. Or at least almost over, if the camp at Microsoft is still not majorly prepare, evaluate and change for the next long future.

I really doubt and eager to see whether the slower, stubborn-ner, and "dumber" Ballmerian-style Microsoft would be able to do that. I mean, Microsoft under Mr. Ballmer is nothing but just an "uglier photo-copy machine" of what others do.

I mean, Microsoft was just simply so busy "copying" the MacOS X GUI concept, copy the Adobe Air concept, copy the touch concept (and rename it a bit) ...

Has the beast of Redmon really lost its innovatie soul?

The next computing era (mobile, desktop and hybrid) I guess is poised for the most innovative contender; not the most "photocopy-capable" one.

We'll see together how the "future" upcoming computing landscape could be. Mobile computing is definitely the "next computing" scheme that would be embraced by EVERYBODY.