The evolution of a brand can be an interesting thing.
In the beginning, there was the PalmPilot. It sounded hip and conveyed core feature of the original product, which was basically an electronic address book and calendar that could fit in the palm of your hand. It came in two flavors, PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional. Easy enough for anyone to understand.
Then someone in the US Robotics lineage decided to drop the Pilot name and go for the first name only: Palm. At the same time, new products were engineered to fit into a BMW-like offering of the "III series, V series or VII series". Then before long alphabet soup made its way into the game and we had models like the Palm IIIe (economy?) and the Palm IIIx (expandable?). It began to get confusing, however, when they introduced the Palm IIIxe -- my first Palm. Was it a cheap expandable model or an expandable version of the cheap model or something else entirely? I never did figure that out.
With the arrival of the high-style Palm V designed by Ideo, suddenly Palms became the must-have accessory for those in the know. The only problem was that in countless movies, TV shows and news articles, they were still being referred to as PalmPilots. Ah, the horror!
As Palm was spun off from USR, it again insisted on tweaking its image. The logo became round, with dual highlights on the edges. Blue became the signature color on the website and all product packaging. An arc featured prominently in the layout of the website and the visual identity of the brand's marketing collateral. It looked smart, professional and capable of being received in the newly important enterprise market.
Despite the Palm V probably becoming the best known consumer technology product since the introduction of the IBM Thinkpad line of notebooks, someone decided it was time to mix things up a bit. Here after, all new products would be known by an "m" prefix (for mobile?) and a three digit number. Sigh.
One reason I have never been as passionate about Sony Clies or HP / Compaq iPaqs is that I can never remember what model number it is that I like. I mean my social security number is shorter than some of their model numbers. The ethos of Palm, like Apple, has always been about keeping things simple. So, too, should their product naming be.
Every time they have changed their naming convention, the channel has looked cluttered as they sell out both old (IIIxe, V, etc.) products and introduce new (m100, m500, etc.) products. The m500 was the successor to the V, but I'm not sure how apparent that was to the casual buyer. And then came the m505, which was a color m500 (duh?) with a terrible screen. So what did Palm do? Follow it up with the m515, which had a better color screen. Now that's obvious.
The latest rebrand rolled out last year in an attempt to segment the products between consumer (low margin) and enterprise (high margin) markets. Two sub-brands were chosen for this initiative: Zire for the consumer line and Tungsten for the enterprise line. I've always had mixed feelings about sub-brands but gave Palm the benefit of the doubt.
The first products to lead both sub-brands weren't exactly critical successes. The consumer model, Zire, was more targeted to the impulse buyer at Wal-Mart than a viable replacement for my IIIxe. And the enterprise model debuted at $499, nearly in the PocketPC pricing stratosphere. Since then, they have introduced some more exciting products, like the consumer Zire 71 with a built in camera and the enterprise Tungsten C with integrated Wi-Fi.
At the same time, Palm made plans to spin off its operating system group into a new company named PalmSource. I'm sure there were many heated debates in Milpitas about who should get to keep the vaunted Palm name -- the hardware group or the OS group. In the end, it appeared that the hardware group got to keep the cherished Palm name. I'm not sure if this was the right or wrong decision, but that's how it's been for a year.
This whole evolution has complicated the lives of those like me who try to reference things correctly. When I first became a Palm developer, we were developing for "Palm Powered" devices. Try telling a movie star to say that: "Oh, I just love my Palm Powered device!" Not likely. I moved on to calling them Palm handhelds, which I believe someone at Palm once told me was okay. Then I tried on the one word Palm for size. It always felt a bit short, but I've stuck with it for lack of more clarity.
For a time I tried calling them "Palm OS devices" or talked about PalmSource, but it just got too confusing.
So it was with some surprise and concern I read this morning that Palm is now changing its name to palmOne once it completes its spin off of PalmSource. Sigh.
Why take one of the great tech brands of the last ten years and split it into two so that none of its original brand equity remains? What are they thinking?
I am even more troubled by the radical change in the visual identity of Palm / palmOne. Gone will be the distinctive Palm blue that has graced everything for the past several years. In its place will be the colors of the two sub-brands: orange for Zire (present in the "One") and the deep red for Tungsten (present in the "palm"). I was fine with them for accent colors, but the duo is not exactly my first choice for a beautiful corporate identity. New products bearing the palmOne name will start appearing in 2004.
I have to wonder in the midst of all this, what is going to happen to the Handspring brand? Palm anncouned acquistion plans for Handspring earlier this year, likely to gain access to its successful Treo smartphone line as its own data-centric smartphone efforts have thus far failed. As far as I know, the successor to my Treo 300 is still going to be branded the Handspring Treo 600 when it arrives this fall. But future products? It's anyone's guess.
Palm OS still powered more than one in two new handhelds or smartphones sold in the world in 2002. But with Microsoft breathing down its neck with its "embrace and extend" strategy of rebranding PocketPC as Windows Mobile this year, it will be interesting to see if Palm -- both PalmSource and palmOne and friends (Sony, et al) -- will be able to maintain a branding advantage or if Palm is now destined to go the way of Apple, which has a dynamite brand ... and about 2% global market share.
The jury is still out. Good luck!
