Palm Economy case
Palm Economy
Strategic management of technology
BY
David Ortiz
IEN572
02/17/14
University of miami
Palm has a significant advantage when it comes to effectively competing with its rivals. This is mainly because of its ability to effectively use technology. When the Windows CE operating system began to rival Palm with color and multimedia applications, Palm was able to respond with a version of the Palm OS that has color screens. It is understandable that the features of the Palm OS lagged behind Windows CE, since color screens were not Palm's main objective. However, the Palm OS was still highly preferred by many customers because it was faster and required less hard disk capacity. This preference for lightweight, easy-to-use devices is the philosophy that Palm was founded upon, and gives Palm the advantage of being completely customer-oriented. Its rivals, on the other hand, seem to be more oriented toward better technology, and not necessarily the aesthetics of the products they are marketing.
One of the biggest problems facing Palm was that its Palm.net service was completely dependent upon the service of Bell South. This was not simply a matter of contracts, but the fact that Palm lacked the physical flexibility to switch carriers easily. All of its PDAs were configured to work exclusively with the frequency used by Bell South, and any changes in carrier would have to be accompanied by major changes in device design.
This dependence on Bell South for the very operation of the Palm.net service on PDAs may have been tolerable inside the United States, but the problem was compounded overseas. In order to market the device internationally, Palm would have to reconfigure its devices to work with local carriers in areas that Bell South did not serve.
This problem has several implications. Firstly, having a contract exclusively with one company, and being bound to it because of physical limitations such as frequency,
Strategic management of technology
BY
David Ortiz
IEN572
02/17/14
University of miami
Palm has a significant advantage when it comes to effectively competing with its rivals. This is mainly because of its ability to effectively use technology. When the Windows CE operating system began to rival Palm with color and multimedia applications, Palm was able to respond with a version of the Palm OS that has color screens. It is understandable that the features of the Palm OS lagged behind Windows CE, since color screens were not Palm's main objective. However, the Palm OS was still highly preferred by many customers because it was faster and required less hard disk capacity. This preference for lightweight, easy-to-use devices is the philosophy that Palm was founded upon, and gives Palm the advantage of being completely customer-oriented. Its rivals, on the other hand, seem to be more oriented toward better technology, and not necessarily the aesthetics of the products they are marketing.
One of the biggest problems facing Palm was that its Palm.net service was completely dependent upon the service of Bell South. This was not simply a matter of contracts, but the fact that Palm lacked the physical flexibility to switch carriers easily. All of its PDAs were configured to work exclusively with the frequency used by Bell South, and any changes in carrier would have to be accompanied by major changes in device design.
This dependence on Bell South for the very operation of the Palm.net service on PDAs may have been tolerable inside the United States, but the problem was compounded overseas. In order to market the device internationally, Palm would have to reconfigure its devices to work with local carriers in areas that Bell South did not serve.
This problem has several implications. Firstly, having a contract exclusively with one company, and being bound to it because of physical limitations such as frequency,