Palm Responds to the iPhone
Palm Inc., the maker of hand-held computers, has hired a top Silicon Valley software designer as it seeks to respond to the challenge posed by Apple's new iPhone. — The designer, Paul Mercer, a former Apple computer engineer, began work three weeks ago …
Context & Ripple Effects
Palm's answer to Apple's newly introduced iPhone is a hiring move rather than a product announcement: the hand-held computer maker has brought in Paul Mercer, a former Apple engineer described as a top Silicon Valley software designer, who began work three weeks ago. The choice of hire signals that Palm sees the iPhone challenge as a software-design problem, not a hardware-spec problem.
The detail that matters is where Palm went looking: straight into Apple's own alumni ranks. For an incumbent whose franchise was built on hand-held computing, importing the challenger's design DNA is an admission that the interface bar for these devices has moved.
First-order effects
- Palm's software group gains an Apple-trained design lead mid-development cycle, so whatever iPhone competitor Palm fields will be shaped around Mercer's interface work rather than a routine refresh of its existing hand-helds.
- Apple now faces a direct rival response staffed by one of its own former engineers, closing part of the experience gap that made the iPhone hard to copy.
Second-order effects
- Every rival handset maker watching this hire now has a visible price for a credible iPhone answer: scarce interface-design talent commands recruiting competition, tightening the market for ex-Apple software designers.
- Palm's development priorities tilt toward the software layer, squeezing resources for the incremental hand-held features its existing customers were used to getting.
Third-order effects
- If interface quality becomes the decisive buying factor, hardware-centric incumbents across the industry will be pushed to reorganize around operating-system and design teams — determining which hand-held makers survive the transition Apple set off.
- A talent-poaching pattern anchored on one company's alumni tends to draw regulatory and contractual attention to non-compete and IP boundaries as firms bid up former insiders.
The trend: Hand-held computing is shifting from a hardware-specification race to a software-platform contest, with Apple alumni emerging as the most contested recruiting pool in the industry.