Recently our friends at sister site TreoCentral pointed us to this snippet: Apple was seriously interested in purchasing Palm back in 1997.  This is interesting for all sorts of reasons, but chief amongst them for me is this: Had the deal gone through, we might have seen the iPhone not only come to market earlier, but possibly seen it prevent other smartphone manufacturers (like RIM) from being able to compete.  It’s an interesting ‘what could have been’ scenario: just as Apple was killing off their Newton line, it would pick up the Palm Pilot and add functionality to it at presumably a more rapid pace than Palm did.

It’s also notable that even back in 1997, the powers-that-be in Apple recognized that they would need to transition from a strictly-computer company to a consumer products company:

A perhaps little known fact: in the Summer of 1997, Steve Jobs called Eric Benhamou, 3Com’s CEO (the company owned Palm). “Give me the Palm and come and join my Board of Directors. Only Apple can make Palm a true consumer brand.” Nothing happened. Apple’s foray into the product segment had to wait ten more years.

Of course, neither Apple nor Palm were in a position to really get things moving quickly at that time.  Palm would have to wait until their first (of many) convoluted ownership shakeups sorted itself out and Apple itself was still in the midst of redefining itself for the Steve Jobs era. The parallels between Palm now and Apple then are also fun to think about — both in dire need of a turnaround, both written off by much of the industry, and both have/had Jon Rubinstein playing a key role in revitalizing hardware.

I could go on and on playing “What If?” but instead there’s something else that this little snippet brings to mind: Palm got something right with the original Palm Pilot way back in 1997 and I really wish Apple would take a closer look at that 1997 tech.

Read on to find out what Palm got right way back in the mid to late 90s.

Pitting the PalmPilot against the Newton was (and is) an interesting exercise. The Newton clearly had aims to become the next major computing platform (the iPhone has similar aims and better chances), it was powerful, networked, and generally ambitious. The PalmPilot: it had aims to replace your organizer and that’s about it. It was a simpler device because Palm recognized that it would need to be pocketable and (relatively) inexpensive.

Back then, at least, the PalmPilot won out — and one lesson that Apple clearly took from that was the simplicity and pocketability trump power in handheld devices. That’s not to say that the iPhone isn’t powerful (it is), but Apple has taken a strategy of unveiling that power bit-by-bit as they’re ready to do so. First and foremost, Apple focused on nailing down the core functionality and a consistent UI.

The PalmPilot was a compelling device for many many people for several years (and continues to be some a smaller group). In the form the the PalmOS Treo and the Central, the PalmOS continues to be a useful, though simple, OS for millions. What about the PalmOS was so compelling then and remains compelling now. I could point to a few things, but for most I think it was simply the ability to create and sync the “Four Pillars of PIM.”

The what now? The Four Pillars of PIM are the 4 applications that were given separate buttons on the original PalmPilot. They were the essential core things you would want to do with a pocket organizer. You’d want to be able to enter data both on your computer and on the device itself and have that data seamlessly sync. The Four Pillars of PIM:

• Calendar
• Contacts
• Memos
• ToDo

On all of these applications on the PalmOS, you can create new entries incredibly quickly and you can enter your data on the desktop and sync it over. You can probably tell where I’m going with this, but I’ll come out and say it anyway: the iPhone only gets 2 of the four. Contacts and Calendar sync seamlessly (and now wirelessly!), but Notes on the iPhone lives in its own little world and ToDo/Tasks is nowhere to be seen.

Now, I understand that both of these gaps can be filled with 3rd party applications on the iPhone, but those apps require you to sign up for some 3rd party’s website and then further find ways to sync or access your data there. What should happen is that these last two Pillars should sync over — either through iTunes, Exchange, or MobileMe. Exchange, you might note, fully supports syncing both ToDo and Memos. It does so with Windows Mobile, in fact, just fine.

What’s especially frustrating is that there have been signs that we’d see support for these features. Over a year ago we reported on a warning error that popped up in Mail’s Notes feature. Here, take a gander for yourself:

“Rich text notes may not be editable on iPhone and other devices.” If you are using a Mac with 10.5, you can go create that error yourself right now.

What’s more, when Apple updated OS X’s Mail.app client back then they not only added notes but they also integrated ToDos. Whereas previously they had only lived in the Calendar Application, now they were in Mail. In short, Apple seemed to be setting up Mail.app to have similar functionality to Microsoft’s Exchange email client. The implication was that they’d be able to sync all four Pillars of PIM on both platforms. The reality is that something is keeping Apple from finishing off these features that they clearly have started.

I wish I could say I knew what’s stopping them. I suspect that Apple’s more concerned with other issues (like getting push notifications worked out) that they believe are more important than Notes and ToDo.

I’m happy that in addition to the Four Pillars of PIM our devices now have other, equally essential features like Push Email, SMS, Web browsing, and Telephony (the Four Pillars of COM, if you will). I’m equally happy that syncing PIM information is moving to wireless push instead of tethering and manually syncing. All this pleases me and overall we’re obviously much much better off now than we were a decade ago. Still…

People used to talk about the “Zen of Palm.” It was 1 part minimizing taps, 1 part removing features that weren’t necessary, 1 part speed, 1 part intuitive UI, and, well, a lot more. Nowadays people refer to “iPhone-Likeness” in a very similar way. But part of the “Zen of Palm” is that they recognized what the four most important organizer functions were and made those functions seamless, easy, and immediate. Having to sort though 3rd party apps, pick one, then try to re-work your current set of notes and ToDos to fit with some new system is definitely not “iPhone-Like.” It’s janky, and Apple needs to fix it ASAP.

In other words, yes, I’m already looking forward to iPhone OS 2.3.

One last bit: the PalmPilot also had a feature that’s sorely lacking on the iPhone and, in fact, on most non-PalmOS devices: decent device-wide search capabilities. One field that searched through the databases of every core app and many 3rd party apps. If the PalmPilot was able to do this, you’d like to think the iPhone could.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The Four Pillars of PIM — TiPb of the Iceberg

[Here's a bonus TiPb of the Iceberg for you this week, courtesy of the humongous news coming out of Apple's Quarterly Conference Call]

Tuesday’s news that the iPhone has been selling well stupendously well, in case you weren’t paying attention, was really big. It’s tough to express how big. Some of the bullet points:

• They exceeded their sales goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008 already, with the holiday season still ahead of them
• They sold nearly 7 million iPhones in three months.
• They sold more iPhones than RIM sold BlackBerrys (yes, that’s the proper plural spelling)
• Based on revenue from iPhones, Apple was the #3 cellphone maker last quarter, behind only Nokia and Samsung.
• They achieved all this in 15 months.

Now, there are caveats to these numbers: there was pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G so these numbers almost surely won’t hold; RIM’s sales were depressed because of delays releasing the BlackBerry Bold. Don’t let these caveats mislead you, though, what Apple did with the iPhone 3G in the past three months is unprecedented in the mobile industry, it was pretty much unprecedented in any industry.

The most recent numbers we have show that RIM and the BlackBerry enjoy the undisputed lead in US Smartphone marketshare, while Nokia has the undisputed lead worldwide. Apple may have its work cut out for it going after Nokia, but it seems very clear that they are on track to seriously challenge RIM in the US market.

What’s amazing about that possibility is that RIM and Apple have very divergent strategies. RIM has dozens of different BlackBerry models aimed at nearly every demographic imaginable: from the Pearl Flip and Pearl for the low end all the way up to the Bold and Storm for the high end. They have phones available on every carrier. Most importantly, they have practically locked-up the enterprise market and are as effective as anybody (but Apple, perhaps) at targeting the consumer market.

To counter that broad, multi-pronged strategy, Apple has one model on a single carrier. Steve Jobs:

Well, I wasn’t alive then but from everything I heard, Babe Ruth had only one homerun, he just kept hitting it over and over again. So I don’t think that — I think the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing and most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business. So we are extremely comfortable with our strategy, our product strategy going forward and we approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different than most of our competitors. [Seeking Alpha]

Apple’s dedicated to presenting the iPhone as a single platform as much as possible. That strategy appears to be working. Not only is it easier for developers to target a single device (or, if they do indeed introduce an iPhone HD, a single device with multiple resolutions), it’s radically easier for Apple to continue to develop the platform.

RIM’s platform challenges are much bigger. As Mike and I discussed in this week’s Podcast (forthcoming!), RIM’s BlackBerry Operating System may need to be completely overhauled in the coming years, but the recent BB Developer Conference did show that it has more legs than I previously gave it credit for. Still, BlackBerrys have a confusing array of Operating System versions that vary from device to device, from carrier to carrier, and from region to region. On top of that, they’ve recently added the Storm to the mix, which features a touchscreen and requires a different UI.

Although RIM does have an aggressive development roadmap that’s clearly a response to Apple, it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to roll out their improvements quickly enough to counter the iPhone onslaught.

In short — Apple has not only hit the ground running like a Formula 1 racer, they also are not towing a trailer full of backwards compatibility and multiple-device compatibility issues. If this were the entire story, I would have little hesitation in simply saying “Game Over, Apple Wins.”

But there is one area where Apple is still going to have a tough time of it: the enterprise market. There are a couple of reasons for this, but both of them have to do with companies feeling ‘locked in’ to the BlackBerry ecosystem. The first (and perhaps smaller) lock-in is BlackBerry Messenger, a BlackBerry-specific IM-like protocol that does indeed see heavy use. Our friend CrackBerry Kevin noted that while he was in New York he met a ton of people who purchased BlackBerrys specifically so they would be “in” with all the Wall Street types who use this form of communication extensively.

The second, and bigger, lock-in is the array of features tied to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Server (BES and BIS). This includes not only push email and PIM, but comprehensive device management, enterprise applications, and (soon) a protocol to push any information whatsoever to a BlackBerry (much like Apple’s now-late push notifications). Much has been said about the iPhone’s Exchange support, but push email via Exchange isn’t a magic bullet. In fact, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has had Exchange support for several years now and they recently introduced MSCMDM, which offers comparable device management to the BES. These features haven’t so much helped Windows Mobile gain traction as they have helped stem the bleeding. Of course, we can have another discussion about why Windows Mobile isn’t gaining traction against RIM (Hello UI), but for now I’ll just make the smaller point that simple Exchange integration doesn’t cut it.

Apple also has not traditionally be able to ‘get’ enterprise on the Mac front either — fundamentally many see them as a company that’s not focused on the enterprise. That may continue to be the case — in fact I think it will be — so don’t expect RIM to be forced to close up shop as quickly as Apple has established themselves. This is a fight that will go on for awhile.

Wither Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Android? I honestly believe all of the above have the potential to become more than 15%-ish players in the US smartphone market, but I don’t think any of them will be able to pull it off in the next year or so. Heck, even if they never pull it off, 15% of the US smartphone market is totally legitimate given its rapid growth. But for right now, the big boys are Apple and RIM.

One last thing to mention: as John Gruber notes in his excellent analysis, if you dig a bit into the numbers it becomes clear that the iPhone is soon going to be Apple’s biggest business and the platform will soon become their most important platform:

So the question is: Despite continuing strong iPod sales and record-breaking Mac sales, how long until the iPhone is undeniably the primary product and platform made by Apple?
My answer: Not long.
And I think Apple’s executive team sees it the same way.

Agreed. Looking back, it’s amazing we didn’t see this coming the moment Mac OSX became a great platform with 10.2. The Mac is an elegant operating system with a creative and engaged developer community; it’s only sold on incredibly good hardware; it ‘just works’ and rarely crashes. That’s exactly what has long been needed in the smartphone market.

Whereas the Mac faces a market where the superstructural elements prevent it from rapidly gaining marketshare, the smartphone market is much more fluid. It’s no surprise that the iPhone is coming on strong when you think of it in this light. It seems surprising because we assume that the smartphone market is like any other market that has come before — it’s not. People can switch phones more easily than they can switch computers if only because of the lower prices, and they do.

Companies are different, though, they hold on to their platforms — both PC and Smartphone — for 4-5 years before they consider a change. Now that we have number portability, the last real thing keeping people from switching smartphone platforms every few years is Enterprise lock-in. RIM’s managed to get it, Microsoft less so, and so the question becomes twofold:

1. Will that lock-in hold?
2. If the iPhone can’t crack Enterprise, will the consumer / small business market be enough to push them up to #1?

The answers are “For at least a few years” and “Yes.”

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Marketshare: Will Apple Take the #1 Spot From RIM’s Blackberry? – TiPb of the Iceberg

[Introducing TiPb of the Iceberg, our new, bi-weekly column from TiPb Senior Editor, and all-around Smartphone Expert, Dieter Bohn.]

The recent news that development house Tap Tap Tap is breaking up has me thinking about the App Store and developers again. Partially it’s because Tap Tap Tap has previously been mentioned here at TiPb as an example of developers raking in the cash and as an example of developers being open about how much they’re making and what they think of the industry. The break-up is interesting for a few reasons in this context.

After the break, some ruminations and thoughts on the State of the Apps from this layman’s point of view. Warning: as you can see from the title, this post includes hackneyed references to the Long Tail

Firstly, the details of the breakup include a new way for developers to make money off of applications — by selling them completely. Tap Tap Tap’s “Where To?” app is now on the market for a buyer, having made around $200,000 up to this point. I’m doubting that we’ll hear what the final selling price is, but I have a hunch that it’s not going to be sky high. The reason for that, though, is wrapped up in the Long Tail.

The standard business model when people talk about the Long Tail goes like this: niche software products (or blog posts, or what-have-you) never really go away, instead they generate a small amount of revenue for a long time after their initial sales surge. Taken together, this ‘long tail’ of sales can add up to real money — eBay makes more money selling millions of niche products than they do selling big ticket items, for example. You see this in other mobile ecosystems — There are plenty of software shops on Windows Mobile that push out all sorts of apps year after year. And, of course, the movie, music, and publishing industry rakes in untold millions in practically passive income every year based on their huge back catalogs of DVDs, CDs, and Books.

So the idea applied to the App Store would go thusly: Instead of developing one or two blockbuster apps that make beaucoup bucks, we may see these developers feeling pressure to keep creating new applications for that initial sales bump and a diversified Long Tail strategy of revenue instead of focusing on a single app and trying to keep it in the Top 50.

image by JSK

Setting aside the question of whether or not producing and maintaining lots of niche apps is even feasible for a single developer or a small software house, there are three ways that I can see the Long Tail theory applied to the App store. One is pessimistic, the other two a bit more hopeful:

1. The Long Tail doesn’t apply to the App Store because it’s just such a gigantic freaking money maker. It’s an order of magnitude larger than any mobile software economy we’ve seen before and it therefore needs an entire rethinking of how to make money with mobile apps. In essence, the right side of the tail for even a single moderately popular app is large enough to support a developer.

While I do think that the App Store is qualitatively different than other mobile app ecosystems, I’m not sure that I think it’s as crazy good as the 1st possibility there. Even if it were, it’s a little to optimistic for a business plan, so let’s look at the latter two.

2. The Long Tail works — niche apps are able to maintain enough publicity on their own merits within the App Store over the long run to collectively make enough money to support a developer.

Right now I’d like to think this is the safe bet — if you don’t think you have a blockbuster on your hands, develop as many apps as you can reasonably maintain and hope they add up to a living. However, I suspect the situation might be turn out to be like the third possibility:

3. The Long Tail doesn’t apply because once an app falls off the Top 50, its sales plummet. In essence, the right side of the tail is so small that no amount of niche apps added together will ever be able to support a living wage. The only safe strategy is to make an application popular enough to stay high up in the sales charts (and provide enough marketing to keep it there) or find ways other than the App Store to drive sales.

Here’s the nut of what I’m saying: My hunch is that it may be tougher for applications to develop a “long tail” on the iPhone than it is for other platforms. The reason I think this is that it looks like the real driver of sales on the App Store are the top lists. As John Casasanta previously noted:

It’s worth pointing out that our sales have dropped significantly over the past few days. We were teetering around the 50th rank for Where To but then slipped under it. It seems that once you drop past that, you’re on a free-fall since the App Store on the iPhone only shows 50 in its top list, compared to 100 in iTunes on the computer. [...] I’m willing to bet that it’s a quick ride into oblivion once you fall off the Top 100 chart and I’m really hoping we don’t get to find that out anytime soon for Where To.

The idea here is this: if your app can’t keep itself in the top rankings, it’s going to quickly become lost in the sea of applications in the App Store. Unless you have a very unique niche (or several of them), it will also be difficult to find via search. Unless you’re able to effectively market it via means other than the App Store, it simply may as well not even exist there. The effective long tail for an App with no visibility approaches zero, in other words.

It’s not the fault of any particular app if it can’t keep itself in the top 50 long-term. There are going to be too many apps and too many newly popular apps for a top list strategy to be viable for any but the most popular programs. Keeping any given application in the Top 50 long-term would likely require a mammoth marketing effort.

As Ars Technica points out in regard to the Tap Tap Tap situation, there does seem to be a genuine concern that the marketing of an app is as important, if not more important, than the design of the app itself. That’s definitely a concern I would share were I looking to make a living developing iPhone apps.

It might be possible (or even necessary) that some sort of structural change to the App Store could help non-top-list apps maintain a revenue stream long-term. I can’t say exactly what that change would be, to be honest, but I suspect it would need to involve a more robust and sortable reviewing system to help the cream rise to the top of categories and searches.

In the meantime, it would behoove most developers to consider what their marketing strategy for their application is going to be long term. Even great apps like Where To? are not likely to get a ton of visibility in the App Store over the long haul (again, through no fault of the app itself), so making apps like it part of a diversified long tail strategy is going to require some serious thought.

We’ve already called the iPhone app development a goldrush and even suggested that it’s a living. That last part may be a little more difficult than it has looked for the past couple months. Apple does have an obligation to help make quality apps more discoverable in the App Store, but not the sole obligation. As with any industry, iPhone Apps (at least the ones that aren’t in the top 50) aren’t going to sell themselves.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Can iPhone Developers Make a Living on the App Store’s “Long Tail”? – TiPb of the Iceberg