Palm Pre An iPhone Killer? Really...? NO!

I love talking to my roommate because he has great opinions. So we were talking about the the Palm Pre. He's an Apple fanboy but he's a realistic one, which I can appreciate. I view myself as a tech neutralist - I like most of it and see the good and bad in all products.

Anyway he was frustrated with people calling the Pre an iPhone killer. He said, "Don't people know that it's not possible to kill the iPhone because it already has the market and all products need to find their own niche."

He's right. No phone at this point can come out and straight up compete with the iPhone, just like the iPod (Look at the poor Zune). The iPhone has consumed the consumer market for smartphones, praticularly touchscreens.

Palm should know this and know not to go on a vengeful attack on Apple rather they need to play their strengths.

The first being the Palm OS followers. There's some out there who will only use a Palm device - beats me why but they're out there. These people will be easy sales as long as the price of the Pre is in their area.

The second strength Palm has is that it has a good business market, unlike Apple. Though Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones dominate this market, Palm should still be able to sell relatively well there - aka perform better than the iPhone.

Speaking of Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices, these phones are less popular in the consumer market, where the iPhone dominates and Google Android phones are breaking in. The Pre is full of functions for the mainstream user - even more than the iPhone - and this will help them outperform Blackberry and Windows Phones.

Lastly, Palm has to promote the Pre to very specific markets and in very specific ways. Palm needs to convince people in each market that this is the device for them and is better than their current device. I mean to the business market they need to show clever uses of it's enterprise functions. To the consumer market, they need to show that it can do that same things as the iPhone but more. To young adults, they need to show off its social networking capabilities, which are superb by pulling all their contacts from many sources.  And they have to be intriguing like every Apple commercial.

All this said, the Palm Pre has a major uphill battle. It's facing a market that has already been dominated by some major players. Nokia the largest cell phone maker has had a very difficult time breaking into the market so Palm, nearly bankrupt, is going to have to be very good at getting the Pre out there.

Also going with Sprint in the US was probably not the best move but my guess is that Sprint gave Palm a lucrative deal since Spring has no major smartphone to back. I just hope that the Pre's GSM version doesn't take too long to come out or that could be crippling.

Good luck Palm.