Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein: I've Never Used an iPhone
If CES 2009 marked Palm's rise-from-the-ashes rebirth, CES 2010 may well be the beginning of its resurgence, the inflection point at which the company really begins to gain traction in a market that nearly left it behind just two years ago.
Context & Ripple Effects
Palm arrives at CES 2010 two years after Engadget's public intervention plea and eighteen months after pinning its future on the Nova project that became webOS. Jon Rubinstein, promoted from executive chairman to CEO in June 2009 (ex-Apple hardware chief), now frames the show as the inflection point where the company gains real traction after nearly being left behind.
The substance behind the headline is distribution: Palm confirmed an exclusive January 25 Verizon launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus — doubling RAM, Touchstone charging built in, and Sprint's exclusivity broken. The 'never used an iPhone' line landed alongside that news, and Between the Lines' pickup flagged it as a remark that could haunt him precisely because Rubinstein built his reputation inside Apple.
First-order effects
- Rubinstein's comment puts him in direct rhetorical conflict with the iPhone at the same moment his Pre Plus and Pixi Plus hit Verizon on January 25, making the ex-Apple executive's distance from Apple's product the story of Palm's biggest-ever retail push.
- Sprint's exclusivity over the Pre ends with the Verizon deal, giving Palm a second major US carrier channel immediately rather than over time.
Second-order effects
- Apple now faces a competitor run by the man who created the iPod, competing on its home turf of carrier shelf space — raising pressure to respond at the carrier level where Palm just gained access.
- Verizon gains leverage over both vendors by hosting the challenger to the iPhone on its network, sharpening carrier-side competition for exclusive smartphones that Sprint had monopolized with webOS.
Third-order effects
- If webOS traction holds, the smartphone market consolidates into a platform war — apps, developer tools (where Palm hired Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer away from Mozilla), and free-app strategies — rather than a device-by-device contest.
- A credible second ecosystem would force carriers and developers toward multi-platform strategies, eroding the single-ecosystem lock-in the iPhone established since 2007.
The trend: The smartphone race is shifting from handset launches to platform ecosystems, and Palm under ex-Apple leadership is betting webOS plus multi-carrier distribution can make it the viable alternative.