Marketing And Production For The Treo example essay topic

Hawkins is an inventor, and he walked away from PDA's because he saw cell phones were everywhere and wanted to invent the best voice based application. He new there was a need for an application that could combine all the features of the mobile communication and organization tools in the market today. I believe he was not only creative, but very smart about the market place, because, he foresaw that PDA's were becoming commodities. The price, at which PDA's were being sold, would severely cramped margins of any company expecting large returns from these devices. Every person on the block could now knock off a version of a Palm Handheld, Hawkins found a complimentary market, and handspring was nimble enough to beat all the big players to that market. The Treo is the hottest device on the market because it was first to market, and has very little competition.

It appears that the advance features of the Treo blows away the competition when it comes to providing a small convenient tool that replaces all the other gadgets. I believe the main competitive advantage is that the Treo wasn't tied to one specific carrier by contract, so they were able to build a network of sales through their affiliation with different cellular carriers. Another competitive advantage of the Treo is the fact that it's not a phone masquerading as a PDA or even a PDA trying to be a cell phone. The Treo was designed from the ground up to be more than a phone, while I believe the phone makers are trying to jam the Treo's functionality into what they are most familiar with, Phones! Hawkins and Company went back to Palm because they really needed each other.

Handspring needed the extra financial stability that Palm could bring, while Palm needed the Treo to help diversify their product line. The two companies together would be able to provide more efficient distribution, marketing, and production for the Treo. Palm One still has to a lot of work ahead of them to survive. They have to fix production and distribution issues with the Treo. They must maintain their lead and market share, and then deliver the margins needed to drive continuous R&D. Palm has to find a way to persistently innovate in the smart phone market. Eventually the other players in the Treo market will catch up.

When they finally do, Palm better have the next great thing ready to role. I expect that the Treo market will become like the PDA market and the device will become a simple commodity, everyone has one, and prices will fall. I believe Palm One can always "one up" the big companies if they stick to their roots of being a nimble company. They must remain visionary, and be able to shift products quickly based on technological advances developed through research. I believe the next frontier for smart phones is voice recognition, and Jeff Hawkins is just the guy to come up with the way to make it happen. Wouldn't it be great to be able to speak into your phone, and have it tell you next month's sales forecast from the spreadsheet on your desk?

Or, how about having it read to you your e-mail, or give you directions based on a spoken address? As I stated earlier, Hawkins is an inventor, and as long as he feels he has creative power at Palm One he will remain with them. If his creativity wanes from product development more towards discovering the origin of life and humanity, maybe he will have to choose a different path.