PALM Inc

PALM Inc

TABLE OF CONTENTS

•CURRENT SITUATION OF PALM INC:3

·Current Mission and Vision3

·Strategy used:3

SWOT ANALYSIS:4

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS6

Current major competitors6

Product lines6

Competitive Strategy8

APPLE8

Microsoft8

Dell9

•GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS9

General Opportunities9

General Threats9

•RECOMMENDATIONS:10

REFERENCES:11

•Current Situation Of Palm Inc:

Current Mission and Vision

“At Palm, we're focused on creating instinctive yet powerful mobile products that enable people to better manage extraordinary lives on the go. Our goal is to deliver products that implement technology in a truly useful way. We innovate. We create and define categories. Expect not just more, but better. Not just faster, but more useful.”

Strategy used:

Palm Inc is using a judo type strategy in their business. They started off with the “puppy-dog ploy” to keep themselves under the radar of their competition while building up market share. They then focused on movement to help “define the competitive space” and force Microsoft to compete in a new arena. The last part of their movement strategy was to “follow through fast” to capitalize on their initial advantage and keep a continuous attack. This strategy was highly successful for Palm allowing them to keep the lead spot in the market for six years until Handspring came around. It also allowed them to continually beat out their competition from Microsoft despite the fact that Microsoft is an industry giant.

Judo strategy lends itself to small companies that are trying to break into a market that is “dominated by a large incumbent” They can use this strategy to be undetected as a threat to the larger company, and then further use it to turn the competitor's strengths into “strategic liabilities”. As the company grows however, the strategy does have potential to become a weakness. According to an expert, when a company dedicate a lot of time in developing some specific skills & strengths, then they are creating opportunities that the competitors can utilize and hurt them. In other words, the company develops the risk of becoming a target of a possibly superior judo strategist. This risk is the biggest weakness of the judo strategy.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Strengths: The biggest strength of the Palm Inc is the strategy which it is using. They are using a judo type strategy, using the “puppy-dog ploy”. Using this strategy has enabled Palm to operate in the industry & stay unnoticed as a threat by their competitors, especially by Microsoft, for the time being. (Yoffie, 2001).

The other major strength of Palm is their superb integration in software & superb hardware design. Since they were so well inter connected, they kept themselves to stay simple & make steady inroads in the market, which is a result of their strength.

Weaknesses: Satirically, the strategy being used by Palm Inc is also their weakness. (Littman & Abramson, 2002) According to an expert, “By investing over time in specific skills and strengths, you create opportunities that perceptive rivals can exploit. In other words, you risk becoming the target of another and possibly better judo strategist”.

Another weakness of Palm is the slow speed of innovation in their company & the deficiency of harmonization between the marketing and production ...