Over the weekend, cofounder of Elevation Partners and Palm investor Roger McNamee made some bold statements about the Pre and the potential for iPhone users to flock to the new webOS handset. However, Palm went out of their way today to make a document on their investor relations website, disputing his strong talking points in an interview with Bloomberg (see video), and in an article.
For example, Palm decided that his statements on how early iPhone adopters would cross over just to get the coolest new toy, and that the Pre would be several times faster than the iPhone, "running rings around it on the web", were too strong for their liking.
After putting such a large stake in the company (see video), it's easy to understand how McNamee would be somewhat enthusiastic about the new platform. However, InformationWeek states, "he needs to understand that he can't make statements that could be misconstrued as factual when there are so many unknowns about the Pre's performance right now." The document by Palm is rather dry, but amusing in the right light, notes Engadget. A few excerpts are below:
5. With respect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript that the Palm Pre is "going to be a million times – well, not a million times – several times faster" than Apple, Inc.'s iPhone products and is "going to run rings around them on the web," the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.
8. The statement in the second paragraph of the article that "not one" person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date "will still be using an iPhone a month" after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.
10. With respect to the implications in the second to last and last paragraphs of the article that Palm's new operating system will give it an edge over competitors that "are going to run out of gas way before" Palm, estimations of the relative useful lifespan of smartphone operating systems are conjecture, unverifiable at this time, and age is not necessarily predictive of their relative long-term success.
For the full document, go here.
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