The Palm Pre is getting a lot of buzz with technocrats and techno-nerds and I count myself as one but in the world of people who ask questions when buying a computer such as “Does this get the internets?” Palm means tree or the part of your hand you slap for a high five.

10) What exactly is the selling point of the Pre? It can run two apps and it has a “real keyboard.” Feature lists as a selling point? Yea, that really helped the Zune and SanDisk topple the iPod … our mp3 player has FM! Just like with FM radio on an mp3 player, running two apps and a “real” keyboard is appealing to about 3% of the audience … nice but don’t expect to have more than 3% of the marketshare. Trading EVERYTHING about the iPhone for a “real” keyboard and being able to run two apps is not a huge % of iPhone users – otherwise, the iPhone would not be a monster hit. Clearly, NOT a major issue that only technocrats care about. Palm seems to think having “better or more features” will carry the day. They could not be more off target.

9) RIM & Blackberry. For people who think the Apple touchscreen won’t work for them, they want a real keyboard or hate Apple – unlike the iPod, they can easily switch/keep their Blackberry. THAT is Palm’s potential target audience. iPhone buyers CLEARLY do not feel the keyboard thing is a hinderance so it’s really Backberry users versus Pre.

What exactly is a PRE? Pre to what? A better phone? Why not name it BETA? Or NOT AWAKE? There’s no real point in going over a product naming class here but short of naming it TALIBAN, Pre means nothing on every level. If that’s a glimpse of their marketing prowess, they might as well fold up shop.

7) Palm has literally and figuratively no money. At last count, the company had $200 million in the bank – THE ENTIRE COMPANY, not the Pre Division. How many can they even afford to manufacture? You know the iPhone costs around $200 in just parts … that means Palm can afford to make exactly 1-million Pre’s presuming they will spend ZERO on marketing or distribution … of course, they can borrow more money but it’s kind of like taking off in a plane with 1/8 of a tank of gas to go around the world and planning on stopping at Vegas to make enough to fill the tank … um, yea, good luck with that.

6) Sprint is their only partner. While Sprint has more money and there’s nothing really wrong with Sprint’s cell service or coverage, they are a DISTANT third in cell customers and also having cash flow issues also … Is Sprint & Palm going to outmarket Apple & AT&T? Yea, good luck with that.

5) Clearly, the Pre is a nice upgrade for current Treo users but for the average person, the iPhone was a HUGE LEAP in smartphone usability. The phone not only looked great but was EASY TO USE in EVERY ASPECT. Not saying iPhone 1.0 was perfect but in comparison on the most important features to earlier smartphones – I tried surfing on a Blackberry pre-iPhone – might as well go for a swim in molasses … much as with an iPod mp3 player to previous mp3 players, Apple made it ALL WORK. Now, EVERY ONE is a copy. Palm had plenty of chances to deliver but choose not to and it’s TOO FREAKIN’ LATE. They are now just another copycat clone to 96% of consumers. Why buy a copycat clone when you can have an iPhone … it’s not like the Pre is going to cost substantially less – the iPhone holds the #1 mindshare in consumers and even most smartphone buyers – what does it take to outdo Apple in mindshare when the Pre basically looks like an iPhone UI?

4) The iPhone was essentially a phone on top of an iPod – the WORST case scenario was you had a iPod with touchscreen features (pre iTouch) – not only did the iPod have a reservoir of trust and users, it was from Apple. What exactly does the PRE have going for it? Other than people using Treo’s or other Palm OSes? What are the things that come to mind when consumers say Apple? Now Palm? Palm is like Sun, well known in certain circles but to the average consumer – it’s the bright round thing in the sky.

3) There’s no market left for them. Some 80% of iPhone users are extremely satisfied with the phone. If Apple had no addition cachet, if there were no iTunes store, no iPod juggernaut built-in or even in another industry, good luck getting people to switch from an incumbent choice that 80% of buyers are extremely satisfied, so basically, Palm’s maximum potential in some weird vacuum of consumer information and sales would be 20% of the number of iPhones sold … and that would be dismissing EVERYTHING ELSE about the iPhone except the phone … 55% of Blackberry users are extremely satisfied so that leaves Palm a little more room in a vacuum but in the real world with iTunes, iPhone accessory market and RIM’s corporate accounts -how much of the market is left for Palm? It’s non-iTunes, non iPhone accessory, not Blackberry email setup? It’s basically fighting for third with Google, MS & Nokia in the US – Palm’s competitors have plenty of cash – ALL of them. Only Palm is running low on cash flow.

2) Just too late to the game. The phone is only one component of the ecosystem choice. Can I buy music, movies, audio books, world class games AND rent films to load that I can watch on my computer and then switch to my smartphone? And it’s not like any previous Palm software will run on it so it doesn’t even bring in their old users. Are there 200 Palm stores people can go, touch it, ask questions and go back again and again for free like the Apple store? Or even RIM where it’s the company’s phone so someone in IT will fix it?

1) iTunes. It is a known quantity and it works. It was a juggernaut before with EVERY imaginable entertainment media from buying to renting to podcasts to audio books … and now the APP STORE that simply cannot be t0ppled. First, no one can design useability. How many companies basically use iTunes as a template and STILL CANNOT dent iTunes? Because you can copy aspects but only Apple leaves very tiny detail stones unturned. People trust it – people like it.

It’s all too much for Palm to overcome. Engineering a checklist of features is easy. Making it work in the real world is hard. Selling and distributing is hard. It will sell for the same or MORE than the iPhone with a promise of nothing more than a few “extra” features that are unclear if any consumers even care enough to pay extra for … If this was from Nokia, it still wouldn’t dent the iTunes-iPhone and the IT Blackberry but it would be a solid third but Palm who was asleep at the switch for 10 years and expects people to remember who they are – they basically think Apple & RIM’s marketshare can be wiped out by them showing up? It’s a FAIL strategy – didn’t work for Nokia or MS, how is it suppose to work for Palm?

Do they even have enough money to make 500,000 of these? It’s an interesting attempt but like all underfunded companies who think engineering a checklist of feature will be enough and that cash flow will get you to the next stage … in some small niche markets, maybe but when you’re competing against Apple, RIM, Google, Nokia, Verizon & AT&T, you might want to bring more to the fight than a plastic knife.