"iPad Killer" May be Palm's Last Hope

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NerdBoyTV NOTE: This is an interesting strategic idea from writer Tony Bradley of PCWorld on how Palm might salvage its company by possibly abandoning the Palm Pre smartphone and instead focus on taking its superior WebOS operating system to build their own "iPad Killer" tablet. What do you think?

"The Apple iPad has captured the imagination--and a fair share of the news headlines for the past few months. Palm has been in the headlines as well, but for entirely different reasons. Perhaps, Palm could reverse its fortunes and regain its former glory if it went back to its PDA roots and developed a tablet PC to compete with the iPad?

Humor me. Let's consider this for a second. Palm's future isn't looking very bright. While a different business strategy may have led to entirely different results, the reality is that Palm is dragging in last place for smartphone market share with little hope of rebounding.

Palm fans are quick to share the belief that it is a superior smartphone platform. Comments from readers on recent articles include:

• 'Palm Pre's multitasking capability is second to none and still holds the best record of maximum simultaneous running apps (Plus). No matter how you look at it, having the ability to run multiple 3rd party applications is far more advanced than iPhone's inability to do the same.'

• 'The Palm Pre is still a superior product and the benefits of WebOS are still undeniable. If you did a poll on the majority of Palm Pre owners, I'm sure you'll find that most will respond positively satisfied.'

• 'I find the iPhone comical next to my Palm Pre. It is true that if all apps remembered where they were at, multi-tasking would be less necessary. However, multi-tasking is still better. I can look up information on my Pre and then use it in another app without closing either of them.'

It seems that those relative few who have the Palm Pre or some other WebOS-based smartphone from Palm not only like it, but passionately believe it is superior--even to the vaunted iPhone. I can't shake the feeling, though, that Palm users sound a lot like IBM OS/2 and Commodore Amiga loyalists clinging to dying technologies as the ship is going down.

Palm has a proud heritage, though. Before the BlackBerry was the 'CrackBerry', the Palm PDA was a ubiquitous business tool. Business professionals had to have a Palm to sync up calendar events and contact databases. Prior to the convergence of the two to create the concept of smartphones, a Palm PDA was a required companion to the cell phone for mobile business professionals."