Daily Debrief: Palm launches new OS, phone Video

Daily Debrief: Palm launches new OS, phone Video Transcript

[ Music ]

>> Rafe Needleman: Hi. This is Rafe Needleman from CNET News.com. I'm here at CES with Ina Fried, also from News.com, and today we're talking on the daily debrief about Palm's big announcement of a new operating system and new hardware. Ina, what was announced today?

>> Ina Fried: So there were two things. One is the new operating system that they've been working on for several years now. The Palm OS hadn't seen a lot of updates. They've really designed it from the ground up. This bears no resemblance at all to the old Palm OS. It's a really modern OS built on top of Linux but really consumer friendly. The second thing is the first phone based on it, which is called the Palm Pre. It's a really slick looking kind of curved iPhone, if you will.

>> Rafe Needleman: So, Palm's been in the handheld market for a long time, even before the smart phones. Why does this matter so much to Palm?

>> Ina Fried: Well, it matters hugely because their products had really been at once leading but now over time have really become kind of lagging in terms of innovation and certainly where the market is going in terms of better web browsing, better media experience. Those were not strengths of the old Palm OS so they really had to start over, and, you know, the time was really running because you have the iPhone, the Blackberry Storm, a lot of devices that are combining ease of use with these more powerful features so they really needed to do something, and they did something big.

>> Rafe Needleman: Do you think it's too late?

>> Ina Fried: I don't think it's too late. I think one of the challenges will be in getting developer support because there are all these OS's already out there. You know, you've got to write for Rim [phonetic]. You've got to write for Windows Mobile, for the iPhone. So they are going to have a challenge there, but I think the market is still young, and people are really moving to these. The other nice thing is it's not a business phone. It's not a consumer phone. It really can, at least it appears to be able to do both.

>> Rafe Needleman: OK. So one of the really innovative things about the iPhone in terms of the market was its store. So what do we know about getting applications and content onto the new Palm device at this point?

>> Ina Fried: So they didn't talk about it at the press conference, but I did have a chance to ask them afterwards. They are planning some sort of app store. So assuming they can get the developers they need, they do have a way of bringing those applications to the user.

>> Rafe Needleman: OK.

>> Ina Fried: In terms of music, you'll be able to get it from like Amazon's webstore.

>> Rafe Needleman: Direct download.

>> Ina Fried: Direct download.

>> Rafe Needleman: Ah, very cool. So, what's the outlook? What's your outlook for Palm especially given the economy we're in? Is this a good time to launch a new platform like this? Will it make a difference?

>> Ina Fried: I think it's the right economy to launch the product that they're launching because this is where consumers are going. Most people want this kind of phone when they upgrade. So I don't think that's going to hurt them, but I do think the overall economy will hurt them in the sense that it puts more pressure on them to really hit a home run with this release.

>> Rafe Needleman: Oh, and when it's being released to the public?

>> Ina Fried: So, first half of the year is what they're saying. They said we'd like to get it out as soon as possible. One way of telling just how soon is kind of what stage are they at. They're in at the stage where they only have a few prototypes. That's usually a bad sign. It's in carrier testing so, you know, still a little ways out. They weren't certainly handing out units, but probably not too long off, and the one thing they didn't talk about was pricing. But they did say, you know, we know the market is paying for these things, and we're going to be competitive.

>> Rafe Needleman: So do you like it?

>> Ina Fried: I do. The thing that I really like, which we hadn't gotten a chance to talk about yet, is this notion that you have contacts in your Outlook, you have contacts in Yahoo, you have contacts in Facebook. They do a really innovative thing where they group all of the information about a single contact together, and they don't change your Outlook or your Facebook. They just have an interface that grabs all that data and presents it together. So I do really like that.

>> Rafe Needleman: It sounds like it's more respectful of the way we actually live than a device that forces us into certain buckets.

>> Ina Fried: That's how, that's how they were certainly pushing it.

>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Well, I hope it works out for them. Ina Fried, thank you very much. This is Rafe Needleman from CNET News.com. [ Music ]