Brighthand: "Survey Shows U.S. Businesses Prefer Treo Smartphones"

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://brighthand.com/article/Survey_-_Businesses_Like_Treos' target='_blank'>http://brighthand.com/article/Surve...sses_Like_Treos</a><br /><br /></div><i>"According to a recent survey conducted by Frost &amp; Sullivan, Palm's Treo line are the smartphones of choice for U.S. businesses. The company surveyed 531 U.S. enterprise employees holding either line-of-business or IT positions. The survey indicated that, when given a choice, more enterprise employees would choose a Treo smartphone over any other competing product."</i><br /><br />It's obvious that Palm has hit a home run with the Treo, and there was actually a reasonable motive to releasing a WM unit. It remains to be seen, however, if Palm can leverage this success into both long-term viability considering the evolving market, and gain international inroads while they're at it. I'm also intensely curious how the Treo 700w's will fare against the Blackberry as they become available with more carriers.

[Steve14965]

Man, I really want a Treo 700w now, but I just can't get one on Verizon. As soon as an unlocked GSM comes out, I'll be picking one up. I went to bestbuy yesterday and played with it. The screen was not as bad as I thought itd be, and the device is incredibly small. C'mon, Palm, get the GSM 700w out!

As for the survey, this is not surprising. Whenever I see a business person with a Smartphone they're usually holding a Treo.

[that_kid]

I think once palm/verizon release aku2 the desire for treo 700s will be even greater than it is now. Here in my office I have been instumental in mobility and I now have 3 users with 700s and 3 users with ppc6700's. I just found out last night that one of my family members picked up a 700 and two other people at my church are going to get the 700 after using mine.

[Janak Parekh]

I think once palm/verizon release aku2 the desire for treo 700s will be even greater than it is now. Here in my office I have been instumental in mobility and I now have 3 users with 700s and 3 users with ppc6700's. I just found out last night that one of my family members picked up a 700 and two other people at my church are going to get the 700 after using mine.
Yeah, it's so comfortable in the hand... ;) Hey Eric, got any dates on Sprint releasing it?

--janak

[that_kid]

No dates yet, I've been probing my former sprint co-workers but they haven't been told yet either. As a matter of fact they are still trying to get their hands on a 6700. It would be nice is Sprint put everything in place so as soon as the 6 month deal with Verizon ends they could step right in. I know many people who have sprint that want a 700.

[eufreka]

I'll just post the text of my comment in the discussion thread at Brighthand...
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Not for the purposes of this Palm-purchased "study", however.

After all the 531 respondent sample included more Blackberry users than it did Palm users:

250 Blackberry users
167 Palm Users
114 "other brands of smartphones" users

And although your [the Brighthand] "news report" says:

QUOTE: "The survey indicated that, when given a choice, more enterprise employees would choose a Treo smartphone over any other competing product." END QUOTE

This is not exactly what the study says.

What the study ACTUALLY says is: "in those circumstances in which end-users can choose their smartphone, Palm edged its competitors for being the preferred choice, achieving 43 percent of the total respondents, more than any other competitor."

One obvious conclusion is that, given a choice, 57 percent of respondents chose ANYTHING BUT PALM.

Going a little deeper, however, we can interpret that number (43 percent of "total respondents") in two ways: (1) it means 43 percent of 531--or 228; or (2) 43 percent of the total respondents indicating they were allowed to choose (an unknown smaller number).

So, one has to wonder: Companies that use Blackberries (particularly as of September 2005) would NOT allow end-user choice. That means the result is most likely based on the OTHER repondents (531-250=281x.43=121).

Ouch! That doesn't even cover the 167 Palm users who responded to the survey!?!?

And best case, in which it means 228--that still doesn't equal the total number of non-Blackberry users.

So this Palm-purchased study says that among current Palm users (as of September 2005), some of them would still choose Palm.

My final anti-news, BIASed observation is that the survey was completed the week ending September 31, 2005--the WEEK Palm, Microsoft and Verizon announced the 700w. Think they were looking for a little "top of mind awareness" to influence the results? Nah, me either.

[farnold]

When I worked for one of the then BIG6 consulting firms some years agos I headed one of their business lines in Germany. We wanted to enter the back then new area of CRM. At this point we had in this field no single project, no experience, no relationship with any of the top vendors. We used one of the so called analyst companies to conduct a market analysis to understand our potential, our competition and the players likely to dominate in the future. Cost us $30k... and hey - after all they ranked us number 2 player 8O ... wonder where we would have ended up paying $50k :lol:

So if you show me survey or analysis results, tell me first who paid for it and I tell you what it's worth