What are you talking about:
Palm Pre was shown in January
iphone 3.0 was shown in March and slated to be released in the summer
iphone 2.0 was shown in March of 2008 and released in the summer.
How is 3.0 a reactionary move to the Pre like some here want us to believe.
Please don't confuse me with those who fantasize that somehow Apple reacted to the Pre with 3.0 in a matter of a handful of weeks.
Palm would have been totally nuts to have made a phone that only matched the iPhone specs. They had to anticipate that Apple was a moving target and plan a feature set accordingly. Yes, they targeted the soft spots in the iPhone feature set and they added some nice new features and a maybe knocked off the GUI a bit too closely to avoid getting sued.
Apple, on the other hand, knows very well they are a target by everyone in the smart phone business and needs to keep raising the bar. That process likely started before the last incarnation of version 2 went out the door.
I think that inertia is on Apple's side in all this. If Apple's 5 year strategy is to prevail, then their competitors will be always playing to catch up and overtake Apple. If Apple loses the inertia (and that can happen) then they will be scrambling to match competitor's feature sets.
Odds are that by the time the Pre hits the market it will be competing with a 3rd generation iPhone with superior specs... not a good place for a 1st generation competitor with no App Store brimming with goodies (which, by the way, tie iPhone/Touch owners to their existing Apple products better even then brand loyalty could).
Another matter to consider is the manufacturer's cost to build the hardware. Right now the iPhone is less expensive to make then the BB Storm, so it's smart for BB to "sell down" to the lesser phone. No one yet knows what a Palm Pre will cost to make, but Apple's current lower cost of manufacturing (than the Storm) and the ability to do their own custom chips in the near future, gives Apple a path to ride out "Phone Wars" to come.
While I know that Apple loves to have fat margins, last year they told investors to not expect such margins in the future, signaling, to me that they actually felt they might have had to slash prices before this date, and that they are planning on doing so at some point.
Finally, if I were to see where Apple has to anticipate some serious competition it would come from current iPhone owners selling their old phones on eBay after upgrading to the next incarnation of iPhone. Apple needs to continue to make the latest model compelling enough to upgrade to, and cost just barely enough more than the used iPhones to lure new customers to upgrade. In this way the iPhone is a lot like the iPods and Macs.
In addition to the cost of upgrading phones, anyone that buys an iPod, iPhone, iTouch, or Macintosh, has an investment in applications or music that vanishes with a change to brand X devices. Anyone contemplating changing brands, is likely to factor that into the financial equation and be more likely to stay with Apple.
It's been a long time since I've seen such a dynamic market as the smart phone segment has become since Apple's entrance.
