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turnaround
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 9)
SM: You were losing market position at this point. Did you ever consider selling to Apple? EB: There might have been an opportunity to do that before the iTune/iPod product division was too far along, but I do not think this became a real opportunity in the timeframe that would have interested us. Had we
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 8)
SM: What is Ed Colligan’s area of expertise? EB: He contributed a lot in the marketing front of the company. That was his main contribution. Ed was a first time CEO. The board felt he could preserve the innovation skills that had characterized the success of the early Palm days as well as Handspring, while
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 7)
SM: I want to ask about some of these aspects. I think operationally you managed to turn the company around, but where was the marketing vision, the juice, coming from? Who was the visionary? EB: We still had Jeff, who had envisioned the Treo. It was his brainchild, just like the initial PalmPilot. He was
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 6)
SM: Was there was a lot of vision overlap between Palm and Handspring at the time of the acquisition? EB: Yes, this meant that essentially we were buying them back to have access to the smartphone product which was the Treo. The first Treo was an interesting product, but not a great product. It was
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 5)
The impact of 9/11 on a company such as Palm is important to acknowledge. Up to this point, these devices were luxury items in the corporate environment – nice to have, but certainly not mission critical. Post 9/11, America was a terrified society, focused on the fundamentals. Against this backdrop, Eric took over as the
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 4)
Palm’s product schedule went off-track, as they steered consumers off Palm V, an obviously terrific product, without a compelling new product introduction. SM: Do you think it created market confusion for customers? EB: Yes. It was a sign that the pace of innovation had slowed down. All of the people we had put in place
Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 1)
In this second interview series with Eric Benhamou, we discuss his involvement with Palm. If you haven’t already, do read the first interview series for context [here]. As you know, Palm is in the midst of a great deal of change at the moment. However, it is an important company that established the PDA category,
Eric Benhamou & the Turnaround of 3Com (Part 18)
To conclude an extremely interesting interview, here is a final, reflective segment with Eric. We will continue the story of Palm separately, later in September, once Palm’s shareholder vote for the Elevation Partners deal is completed. SM: You have watched what happened since then. What lost 3Com the position you were in at the end
