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Oh, I really, really didn’t want to write this.

I tweeted this week that I will probably give in and buy an iPhone instead of a Pre.  This decision has been brewing for a few weeks now, and though the Pre has a lot going for it, I just don’t think it’s for me.

Here’s why:

• Apps – Android and iPhone have the mindshare.  Palm just doesn’t seem to be gaining traction.   For example, most of the radio stations I listen to offer a free iPhone app with streaming audio and music news.  I’d hoped the ease of Palm’s development environment would make more apps available, but I just don’t see it happening.

• Screen Size – Palm, you just made the Pre screen too darn small to be an enjoyable experience.

• Media – I want a smartphone that’s a solid media player, for both streaming and locally stored content.  The Pre is functional, but I want more than that.

And there are two, more-strategic factors:

1. You bet the farm on social media — and it isn’t what you thought it would be.  The Pre, with all its hooks into the Web, is supposed to be a social networker’s dream.  Are any of these social media phones selling well?  When I’m out of the house or office, I do want access to Facebook, LinkedIn and such, but I don’t want a phone built around them.
   
2. You’re still playing catch-up — and not making progress.  I had such high hopes for the Pre.  I hoped your CES showing this year would be impressive.  Flash would have made all the difference.  It would have drawn a line in the sand that Apple would not cross and instantly made the Droid fans weep.  But there was no Flash.  Only the Pre Plus and some games which are nice, but too little, too late.

And isn’t that the way with Palm these days?

I used to work for a company with a major operation based in Europe.  My colleagues there always wanted to hold off launching projects until they were big, elaborate and impressive.  On the U.S. side, we wanted to launch when they were good enough and quickly evolve them into something more.  The Pre seems like a great phone, and it would have been a killer product two years ago.

The Pre is impressive, it just arrived too late.  (You can thank an ill-conceived strategic separation of the company’s hardware and software units for that — it lost them years of OS development work.)

I’m not totally writing off Palm.  The Pre has some great features that are costly in the iPhone universe — like the GPS navigation (through Sprint, at least).

Palm, you can still win me back, but right now, I’m ready to move on.

Sorry.

The Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog reported this week that Android and iPhone are still gaining marketshare, while Palm and Microsoft are losing ground.  The blog story was based on a ComScore analysis of September through December 2009 subscriber activity.

I think it’s easy to understand why Microsoft is losing ground.  Phone running Windows Mobile have never been appealing to me.  Phone manufacturers put a veneer of usability over a notoriously complex and inconsistent OS.  One of my neighbors has a Windows Mobile phone, and though — to be fair — he likes what it does, he reports quirks like he can’t get rid of old profiles for Bluetooth headsets he no longer uses.

Likewise, I can understand why Palm is losing marketshare it once held with older Palm OS devices like the Treo.  They were awesome in their day, but that time is long past.  Sadly, it looks as if the Pre and Pixi, with their slick WebOS aren’t gaining enough traction.  More on that in my next post.

A new report from comScore found that users of high-end smartphones are heavy users of mobile media and the mobile Web.

iPhone and Android owners report using a lot more mobile media than other smartphone or mobile phone users.  In fact, at 80%, it seems that one of the main uses of their phones is for mobile media.

This isn’t surprising for the iPhone, which began life as an iPod — playing audio and video.  It’s pretty surprising for Android, though.  I’m also surprised that Blackberry users aren’t consuming more media.  I guess they are too busy reading all those crackberry e-mails.

Palm Barely Scores

There’s some bad news for Palm in this report — only 2% say they intend to buy a Pre.  There’s still time to turn this around and create more buzz for the Pre, but if Palm has to produce a really nice update of the Pre at CES.

So much cool tech.  So many choices.  But we still have a long way to go.

I’ve written here before about my Palm T|X, which makes a nice handheld media player thanks to Kinoma and wifi.  With the Download Helper plug-in for Firefox, I can download Flash video and watch it on the T|X.  Pocket DVD Studio lets me put other videos on the T|X.  But what about the latest TV shows?

I can download most of the TV episodes I’d want to watch (or save) from iTunes.  I can watch them on my desktop, laptop or on an iPhone/iPod touch.  Nice, but I don’t actually want to own most of these shows — I just want to watch those I might have missed.  And disk space on my old desktop is at a premium, so I have to archive HD videos immediately.  Why can’t I steam them and “pay” by watching ads, like on Hulu or the network’s own sites?

On my Samsung Instinct, over the Sprint mobile phone network, I can watch streaming video.  Most “channels” offer short clips.  A few offer full episodes.  I can watch Heroes on NBC Mobile (though sadly, this season hasn’t hooked me).  I can pay extra for channels with premium content.

We’re still not where I, as a consumer, want mobile media to be.  I want to …

1. Watch what I want to watch, where I want to watch it.
2. I want it to be free — ad supported is okay.  I only want to pay if I want to keep a copy.
3. I want to be able to watch programs on a variety of devices — stream to my phone or over wifi to a computer or PDA/media player.
4. I want to be able to watch on a mobile device, then plug that device into a TV to watch on a big screen.

That’s my wish list for 2010.  Let’s see how close we get to making it happen.