Palm insurance
There was a time when O2 pretty well had the market cornered in sales of Palm mobile phone insurance as they were, for many years, the preferred supplier for Palm mobile phones in the UK. However, notwithstanding a recent agreement with HP to provide the Operating System (webOS) around which their new range of mobile phones would be built, as a manufacturer of mobile phones for the UK market the name of Palm has virtually disappeared in recent months. Subsequently, if you own a Palm mobile phone and are worried about getting it repaired in the event of it being damaged – now is the time to take out a Palm mobile phone insurance package.
What happened to Palm mobile phones in the UK?
The demise of Palm mobile phones in the UK has to be a bit of a mystery and can only be attributed to an appallingly bad piece of marketing by Palm a few years ago. Thinking back to the 'glory' days for Palm, their PDAs were one of the must have accessories - first as an electronic diary and then to use with an infra-red or later Bluetooth connection, converting your then mobile phone into a MODEM, so you could view web pages and emails on the Palm PDA.
Those Palm devices were, in their time, every bit as sophisticated as our modern smartphones and were protected by the then equivalent of Palm mobile phone insurance policies. Although that time is only just over 10 years ago they were, for those of you to young to remember, heady times – using mobile phones to connect to the internet, wow! Shortly after that, with the increasing commonality of wifi hotspots, Palm were quick to install wifi connectivity into the Palm devices and the need to have to also connect to a mobile phone was removed.
These devices were, again in their time, quite desirous and also needed protecting with a policy like those of the Palm mobile phone insurance policies. However, having developed a wifi Palm PDA, Palm seemed to sit back just at the time that the mobile phone manufacturers were quickly reverse engineering Palm devices, so that the mobile phone included PDA functionality within it, killing off the need for a separate device like the Palm PDA.
It was at this point that Palm made a fatal marketing error. Rather than spotting the trend towards smartphones they persisted in trying to keep the phone and PDA aspects separate. This was no doubt to try and maintain sales of separate PDA and mobile phones, but this turned out to be a poor decision in the light of first 3G mobile phones and then smartphones, capable of doing everything within the one device.
Palm 3G mobile phones with Palm mobile phone insurance deals were produced, but they were decidedly slow off the mark producing a 'true' smartphone. By the time they realised they were behind the times, other manufacturers had already established their smartphone markets and Palm found themselves out in the cold, especially so when it was realised that webOS wasn't really up to the job anyway!
Palm repairs and your mobile phone insurance policy
If the above relates a tale of 'how the mighty are fallen' unfortunately the story of decline doesn't end there and, when you've finished reading this, you'll see why taking out Palm mobile phone insurance makes sense. Apart from Palm being somewhat 'behind the beat' when it came to producing smartphones another issue for them was webOS and the general build quality of their mobile phones.
Testament to the power of good blogs and online comments, finding anyone with a good word for their Palm mobiles is a tough call indeed. Which is bad for Palm – but good for anyone researching which phone to buy or whether or not to buy Palm mobile phone insurance. Unfortunately no Palm mobile phone insurance policy will protect you from the vagaries of the webOS Operating System used in Palm mobiles, but it could prove to be invaluable when it comes to getting your Palm mobile phone repaired.
Bearing in mind that Palm phones were on sale in the UK until relatively recently, reading other peoples comments online about hardware failures and glitches with Palm mobiles – and anyone can see that they can save themselves a fortune by taking out Palm mobile phone insurance, so that they aren't liable for the full cost of any repairs. Don't forget too that, if the failure isn't directly attributable to damage, then taking out Palm mobile phone insurance as an extended warranty is another way of avoiding having to pay for costly repairs.
You are covered against theft. If it is stolen, it will be replaced.