On Palm, I agree–they have to make this one count. That said, they also have lots of people sitting on edge waiting for the Pre after all the buzz from CES and since. We want Palm to get it right; we also want them to get it out! As in “in *our* hands”–it’s all well and good to see demos on Jimmy Fallon’s show and hear that Howard Stern is getting a demo… however, Palm needs to get to the point where Joe Techie can get a Pre. And unless it’s a surprise announcement at CTIA (since everyone’s been watching Palm and Sprint, with no word yet), when will there be an announcement?

Bringing in ex-Apple people has been good; this is one part of Apple, though, that I think Palm would do better *not* to emulate.

I also wouldn’t go out of my way to dismiss the importance of the changes in iPhone OS 3.0. Many of the things appearing are things that users and critics have been requesting. Hardly a snoozer. Since the iPhone became popular in part due to Apple’s perceived responsiveness to user concerns, the upcoming changes are likely to strengthen that perception.

I like what I’ve seen of the Pre so far – but frankly the information is really limited and highly subject to interpretation at this point. I say this frequently, but we simply don’t know what we don’t know yet. My bigger concern with their situation has a little more fact behind it, though: What will be the effect of the precipitous drop in Sprint subscribers? – a 10% drop last quarter. My fear is that this could be a bigger problem for the Sprint/Palm combo than anything else, especially if Sprint starts running into problems supporting it’s infrastructure while facing decreases in revenue.

Let’s hope Sprint’s pockets are deep enough to shrug off the losses and the Pre is strong enough to boost the Sprint subscriber base! But it really needs to happen soon or, like the risk MS faces with Windows Mobile 7, they’ll lose the window of opportunity!

Blackberry actually should be more worried. Blackberry OS is not much farther ahead than the old PALM OS. The storm was more like a sunshower… People stick with blackberry due to Verizon and due to solid email experience. If you took email out of the equation, Blackberry has virtually no real competitive advantage. The main reason people like its email is it has a real keyboard.

The other albatross on the iPhone is the crappy and very overpriced AT&T network and iphone tax. Paying $30/month extra just for the privilege to use a slick UI on a keyboardless phone can only go so far.

I’d rather Palm wait (assuming they have the survival cash) the extra month or two to make the launch a splash, versus have the train wreck the Storm was by releasing a product before it was really ready. Palm won’t get a 2nd chance at favorable reviews so this has to be a homerun, or it will be game over.

Palm better be lining up the dinner reservations for Mossberg at the nicest of restaurants to hand him his new review unit

This is a super competitive business and Apple has raised the bar very high.

So far there are a lot of predictions about the success of the PRE based on exactly zero people using it in the field.

That means there’s a lot of expectation that could potentially deflate very very quickly.