Millenium Marketer

As fate would have it, while I’ve been hoping to do more investigative on this subject, I have to just put it out there.

Netbooks, are they going to take over the mobile market? I’ve been rooting for Palm for quite a while and now that the Palm Pre is coming out in the future, it’s clear that the mobile market is in great need of new innovators.

But are Netbooks mobile? According to Intel’s social media-ist, Ken Kaplan, Netbooks will see their way into their market as a companion to the mightier laptop, when you’re in need of nothing else but email and a little bit of internet surfing.

Sounds like a good bet for catching up on bill pay online.

Supporting this line of thinking is a hot new fashion piece on the technology block, the Vivienne Tam-designed HP Mini which promises to accessorize the wardrobe of tech chicks and gadget guru-esses, (and possibly fashion-conscious gadget geeks). And even more tiny and sleek is the Intel Atom Processor inside.

So, who will win? Granted, netbooks are now spreading fast since the OLPC, but once newer portable phones come out, what will that say about consumer behavior?

In other words, who’s the hot gadget on the block come Summer 2009?
Palm Pre or HP Mini?

Even in a recession, we can still drool.

I am writing you this e-because I really, really want to see the Palm Centro do better. While I, like many others, am a big fan of the iPhone and even the iTouch for its amazing native touch screen capability, I really think it is time other players in the smartphone market give Apple a run for its money.

Of course, your company doesn’t have the ever-perfectionistic Steve Jobs as your company founder, but really, I like to cheer for the underdogs because without them, where would Apple be?

In your next release of the Palm Centro, please include the following:

1. A larger keyboard that pulls out. My hands are small, but not that small. Or, maybe the option to have a touchscreen keyboard.
2. A better camera. I just found out that Nokia and Samsung won some prestigious awards from a well-known photography magazine. I usually think of Nokia and Samsung phones as “utility” phones, not super-productivity phones where I might Flickr my pictures. Come on, help me and my friends out.
3. Lower the barriers with the web and give us more web integration. If WordPress is having trouble integrating with Palm software, then this says to me that the open source model is biased towards the iPhone. Get out there and outreach to software engineers. Get them excited about the Palm and let’s see cool software emerge like it used to…way back in the 90s.

If Palm can do these things, then maybe, just maybe I can stop hearing about the iPhone where ever I go. Until then, you’re just OK, but you’re not cool yet.

Oh yes, and you can certainly tell McNamee about this. Thanks.

I read Dean Takahashi’s column today about how Apple has been very successful at innovating their products recently and taken away some of Microsoft’s market share.

Recently I wrote about Microsoft’s offer to purchase Yahoo and I think Takahashi is right. Microsoft has to solidify their core business before they tackle the internet space. Yahoo as well seems to be losing sight of their core business by engaging in the Microsoft deal although more recent news suggests that stockholders are holding Yahoo back from making any deals, not to mention that such a merger would be challenging with two very different cultures.

Microsoft may have been largely successful due to the large market share in PC products versus Apple in early years, but if the price point is right, consumers may just switch to Apple, and especially since it seems to have more intuitive and better software than Microsoft’s products.

*Updated: Photo to represent not the iPhone but the core business of computers, laptops and OS software. Courtesy of 65 Bit Computers.com