Congruence Model on Palm Inc - Assignment Example

Congruence Model on Palm Inc.INTRODUCTIONPalm, Inc. (Palm) is engaged in providing mobile products worldwide. The company’s major offerings include handheld computer and accessories, and Treo and Centro smart phones. Palm offers its products through two reportable product lines, namely, Smart phones and Handheld Computers. Palm developed new Operating System (OS) related next generation systems software. Palm conducts its business across Asia, Europe and North America. The company is headquartered at Sunnyvale (California), the US.

The company developed Palm web operating system (Palm webOS) based “Palm Pre” product in 2008.ORGANIZATION LEVEL:Product and Services Handheld computers, Smart Phones, (Treo and Centro), PalmWeb OS, Software and AccessoriesStrategyMarketing of products and services through internet, retailer, reseller and wireless operator channels through out the world and at Palm store.Market Asia, Europe and North AmericaStock priceAnnouncement of upcoming Pre phone up surged the stock price of the company.

The stock went from around $1.50 a share to over $16.00 a share in a matter of months! The stock has taken a beating in recent days due to an acknowledgement that they simply aren’t selling as many of their phones as analysts had hoped. Their announcement that sales of smart phone Pre are not as great as hoped, brought the stock price significantly low from $ 16.00 to $ 7.00 per share.GROUP LEVELPalm offers its products through two reportable product lines, namely, Smart phones and Handheld Computers.

Palm developed new Operating System (OS) related next generation systems software. Sale of internet, retailer, reseller and wireless operator channels through out the world and at Palm store are reducing as reported by the company. The marketing infrastructure is more responsive to Apple’s iPod and Blackberry products.CONSUMER LEVELPalm is going up against some pretty fierce competition. The two major players are Research In Motion (RIMM) and Apple, Inc. (AAPL). To simplify the landscape, let’s say that RIMM’s BlackBerry products dominate the corporate market and Apple’s iPhone line dominate the “cool”or consumer market.

Smart phone Pre was positioned to be more of a consumer device like the iPhone rather than the corporate space. Although the Palm Pre is a great product but the problem is that so is the iPhone. Apple marketing machine, ecosystem of Apple products and iPhone integrate seamlessly. The iTunes and App Store allow the simplest and most robust media distribution to the iPhone. The result is not a good head to head matchup for the Palm Pre.Comparing Palm as a company to Apple is not even close. Apple has multiple, fantastic product lines that are thriving and feeding each other (halo effect), where Palm has a single (for the most part) product that is going against enormous challenging competition.

Applying Congruence Model on Palm Inc. The Environment variable that has impact on the organization is two competitive products in the market iPode and Black Berry. The strategy of marketing through internet, retailer, internet and other marketing channels not succeeded as expected and sale is far below the target. The out put products Smart Phone Pre and WebOS have failed and the efficiency of Organization diminished as is visible from the stock market price fluctuation The model illustrates this in Figure 1.

Figure 1REFERENCES[1] Kevin Duffy (2010). The Market Oracle: The Story of Palm Inc. viewed on June 1, 2011at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17578.html