iPhone heading for fall in summer says Palm honcho

Stan Beer
Monday, 09 March 2009 12:18

Opinion and Analysis

Talk about a possible Apple lawsuit against Palm over the multi-touch functionality of its impressive new Pre smartphone makes one wonder if Cupertino is slightly nervous. Super aggressive anti-iPhone rhetoric from key Palm investor Roger McNamee may make Apple wish that spiritual leader Steve Jobs returns soon.

The enigmatic McNamee, simply can't restrain himself from predicting the demise of the iPhone at the hands of the Palm Pre come June 29, 2007. That's the date when the first of the two-year AT&T iPhone contracts expire.

According McNamee, once iPhone users are free of their restrictive contracts, they'll drop their iPhones like hot bricks and go racing out to stores to replace them with a Palm Pre. Wishful thinking? Almost certainly.

However, there is no denying that the Pre is a compelling device, so much so that it has Apple worried.

Quite simply, from all reports and visual demonstrations of the Pre, it not only matches the current iPhone for functionality but it actually surpasses it in quite a few areas.

The Pre may even be able to match the iPhone for its coolness factor - after all U2 frontman and all-round humanitarian and good-guy Bono is an investor. More importantly, so is former Apple hardware head Jon Rubinstein.

With a 3.1 inch screen, the Pre has a lot of the same features as the iPhone, including multi-touch screen functionality with the same pinching, squeezing, flicking and tapping movements - which some say could cause patent issues with Apple.

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