Palm Pre in the UK

One of the most anticipated phones, the Palm Pre, only available on O2, finally launched on Friday October 16th. In a statement yesterday, the company said it sold more Palm Pre handsets on Friday than the number of regular handsets they sell on an average day.

For those that have missed the hype about the Palm pre, I will give a few points as to why this phone has created so much stir:
- For one thing it is smaller than the iPhone with a tiny keyword aswell as the touchscreen.
- You can have more than one application running at the same time which is not the same as the iPhone.
- There will be an app store for the Palm Pre but you can still load other apps and buy them over the air from the Palm app store.
- It is the first device to run on Palm’s new Web OS operating system and as it smaller than the iPhone it is not as clunky and easily fits into your pocket

What is also new with this phone is that you can charge the handset by placing it on an electromagnetic induction pad instead of plugging it in a cable.

Palm Pre is only available on O2 on contracts from 30 pounds a month plus 90pounds for the phone. Those on 24 month contracts can get the phone for free.

It seems awfully convenient that at a time when O2′s exclusivity for the iPhone has come to an end, they bring out the Palm Pre. It will be interesting to see how the smart phone market reacts to such a new handset. Feel free to comment for those that have bought one.

Have a look at this interview on the BBC with the CEO of O2 and the CEO of Palm

The search engine monopoly

The google giant is in the news again this week, for launching the Chrome operating system (OS) for the mobile.
This is separate from Android and Google Chrome OS is aimed for those who tend to spend most of their time on line. It will power all computers, from small netbooks to desktop systems.

A company having more than one operating system, is not unheard of. Afterall, Apple has three OSes including Mac, iphone and ipod.
Google first launched the chrome browser in September last year and now has over 30 million users. Now they want to bring chrome into an operating system and I have no doubt they will succeed in this area.

Google is performing well in the search area where it became famous. According to Hitwise, google is the top search engine with 74% market share week ending June 27th. This is up from last year’s 69%. Since my last blog posting here, Bing.com which only went live last month, has seen an increase in market share from 3.4% in the beginning of June to 6.63% by the end. Not bad for a company entering an already saturated market place.

There have also been changes in the keyword field. People are typing in longer search queries.

Longer search queries have increased in popularity over the past year, on average searches of five to more than eight words in length have increased 8% from a year ago. Where there are searches of eight or more words, they have seen an increase of 16%. SEO experts be aware – the shorter search queries of one to four words long decreased by 2%. So next time you are thinking of bidding on keywords, think more along the lines of key phrases and insert these into your meta data.