How Palm's Treo Got Boost From BlackBerry Lawsuit

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Palm ramped up its marketing campaign for its Treo smartphone while rival Research in Motion was embroiled in a patent fight, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The result: at least 1,500 new inquiries about the Treo in the past few months from corporate customers, resulting in 600 free trials, Palm says. In total, Palm says it has more than doubled its number of sales leads since October. "The doors have been opening," says Ed Colligan, Palm's chief executive. At a November staff meeting, Mr. Colligan says he told his staff to "step things up. We have to go back and knock on doors and respond as fast as we can." ... Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.'"

Push email on the Treo?

[chaos-five]

Admittedly I've yet to own one of these --- does push email exist on the Treo? That seems to be the only thing keeping BlackBerry afloat.

I wonder

[Eightyford]

I wonder how many of those sales are for the Smartphone that runs Windows?

http://reviews.cnet.com/Palm_Treo_700w/4505-6452_7 -31473222.html [cnet.com]

I hope it works

[yog]

I am a Palm user from way back and I am dying for a Treo, but I don't want to buy one and then see Palm go under or sell out or otherwise orphan their products. I want to see lots o' new stuff coming out for Palm platform and I don't want to have to get a Windows-based handheld in a year or two. Go Palm!

That said, I wish it were happening because of free and fair competition rather than that some predatory patent holder with a team of clever lawyers screwed a great company through bogus patent suits. I hope Rim bounces back, too.

You are already screwed

[soft_guy]

The Treo 700 is a Windows CE based device. The 650 will be the last Palm OS based Treo.

I own a Treo 600 and I really like it, but I too do not want a Windows CE based device, so the 600 will probably be my last Treo.

Push with Cingular on Treo

[Hegemony]

I actually have used both a Blackberry and a Treo 650 simultaneously for work (BB for email, Treo for phone features). Recently I installed the Cingular "Xpress" software. It can work with corporate email that does use a redirector but is actually pushing the email to my Treo. Sent items are synched, email read on the Treo are marked as read on my desktop, Calendar is synched, I can search corporate contact lists, etc. Not too bad. I haven't picked up my Blackberry in about a month.

Re:Maybe.

[Jonboy X]

Word on the rumor sites is that the 700p (for PalmOS, as opposed to 700w for Windows) should be out around late May/early June. Roughly the same hardware specs as the 700w, including Sprint's EVDO high-speed network.

Oversimplified conclusions

[moochfish]

In the quarter ended in late November, Palm sold 602,000 Treos, nearing the 645,000 new subscriber accounts that RIM signed on in the same period.

Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.

Here's what's happened so far:

1. Company's reliability goes into question
2. Consumers look for alternatives

This is what Palm is hoping is #3:

3. Competitors overtake market

However, this is what is really happening:

3. Company's reliability no longer in question
4. Consumers stop looking for alternatives

Yeah. Maybe they would have outsold Blackberrys had the lawsuit kept on chugging or RIM lost. Unfortunately for Palm, that did not happen. Whatever edge they had during the lawsuit is now gone. How can you predict continued growth when the market changed in the past month with the conclusion of the lawsuit?