Forget The Pre, Palm's Got A Second Device Coming Out This Year. We're Calling It The Mini-Pre
I came across some very interesting news today. I was mostly minding my own business, hammering away at our various sources in the hardware industry and trying to dig up some sort of information …
Context & Ripple Effects
Palm's entire 2009 restart has been built around a single device, but the framing has been shifting for weeks. In March, the company's chief executive argued publicly that WebOS is bigger than just the Pre base, positioning the OS as a platform rather than one phone's software.
TechCrunch's report of a second device this year — the so-called Mini-Pre — is unconfirmed sourcing from hardware-industry contacts, but it fits that stated strategy exactly: a two-device debut would make WebOS a family out of the gate rather than a hero-phone gamble.
First-order effects
- If the rumor holds, Palm ends 2009 with two WebOS handsets instead of one, giving Sprint and retail channels more than a single SKU to sell against iPhone and BlackBerry lineups.
Second-order effects
- A smaller, presumably cheaper sibling pressures Apple, RIM, and Android handset makers to defend the mid-tier price band they currently own uncontested, and gives component suppliers a second WebOS design win this year.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward platform launches judged on portfolio breadth rather than a single flagship — the same structure that let incumbents like RIM span multiple price points, and the test of whether Palm's executive team meant what it said in March about WebOS exceeding any one device.
The trend: New mobile operating systems are increasingly launching as multi-device families within their first year, forcing incumbents to defend every price tier at once.