Ed Colligan replies to Engadget

So we talked about Engadget’s open letter to Palm. Well, on Palm’s blog Ed Colligan wrote a short response to it. It is not at all impressive.

Let’s start with the very biggest and most obvious problem:

Let’s remember that it is very early in the evolution of the smartphone and there is enormous opportunity for us to innovate.

Very early in the evolution? Granted, as a technology, phones have a long time to go ahead of them, but Palm released their first Treo many moons ago. What happened since then? Was there no opportunity to innovate in the past several years? I could talk about this for a long time, but I’ll spare you.

The rest of the problem is with the whole response. It’s exactly the problem that Palm’s been having for ever - they don’t tell you anything.

We are attacking almost every challenge you noted, so stay tuned.

We’ve been staying tuned for years and you’ve given us nothing. We definitely haven’t received any innovation and we’ve received no communication about anything up your sleeves. I’ve been watching and listening. Nope, nothing.

Although I can’t say I agree with every point, many are right on.

What don’t you agree with? What do you agree with? What’s are the top priority items you are working on addressing? Some companies *cough*Apple*cough* get away with secrecy because they can - their fan base trusts them to do something amazing. Palm, on the other hand, can not. They’ve lost all the trust of their fan base already. They can’t get away with secrecy because the expectation is that they are. not. doing. anything.

If Palm is indeed doing something they need to be telling their users something, anything to keep them believing (Ben Combee is trying, but it’s an uphill battle for one engineer to tackle with zero support from the company). Users and developers are leaving in droves (contrast to the iPhone where developers are doing their very best to hack the device just to let them develop for it!). There are finally many smartphone options at least as good as the aged Treos and people are taking full advantage of it.

This post of Colligan’s was worse than no post at all in my opinion. It not only says absolutely nothing, but it reinforces, in my mind, Palm’s overall communications problem by mumbling platitudes and generalities and expecting people to be grateful for anything that slips from their mouths.

Addendum: You know, I was curious to see what the internet’s reaction to this was, so I went to technorati and did a search for “colligan and engadget” and clicked on a sampling. The first one I came across was jkontherun which I read to more or less agree with my problems, although on subsequent readings perhaps I’m wrong. I then read a series of posts that all are grateful for that letter. Am I wrong? Is it enough for Colligan to say “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine”? Does everyone believe that now?

Addendum 2: Well, at least one person is skeptical of this! Anyone else?

Aug 24th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: palm