After a couple of years of slow bleed, Palm seems to be hitting on all cylinders right now. Their stock price is up. They are in the news every day. They've got a couple of products in play and a brand new platform about to roll out that their base has been clamoring to get for years. My question is... are they overplaying their hand? Apple created more hype before the iPhone launch than probably any PDAPhone in history, and they've largely delivered on the hype and reaped the rewards. Palm will have to execute perfectly over the next couple of quarters or they could be done. This is not a time to stumble.

What brought this thought to mind is today's announcement from Palm and Sprint of the Palm Pre pricing model. It appears that you will not be able to get a Palm Pre unless you are prepared to sign up for a very pricey plan. The default seems to be the $99 unlimited everything plan... a good deal if you need "everything", but most users are not wanting to pay that much and don't really "need" everything. At their media event today, Palm and Sprint indicated that all of the alternate plans will include an everything data package for unlimited data and messaging. Individual plans will begin at 450 minutes for $69/month, or 900 minutes for $89/m. Families will have a choice of 1500 minutes for $129, 3000 minutes for $169 and unlimited plans at $189. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Palm has traditionally tried to play in the lower cost end of the market. So are they trying to give their historical customer base a next play here, or go directly after the competition. I would say its the later... which increases the stakes in their hype situation.

In addition to the Palm Pre (which we still don't have an exact launch date on), the Palm Pro is rolling out this week at Sprint and Alltell. It seemed like this was headed just for Sprint, and then this week Alltell dropped a "me too" announcement. The Palm Pro being a refinement to existing products, so people will know what to expect there. The Pre is the real future of Palm and its started from ground zero in share, applications, etc. Will it live up to the hype? Will Palm be able to repeat the path of the Apple iPhone. We will know very soon.