I have a personal view of the signs of corporate decline. I've worked for a couple of businesses that have gone belly-up shortly after my departure. While my reasons for leaving were many-fold (better opportunities, staleness in the job, etc) there are a couple of things I've seen that I reckon I'm seeing over at Palm.

There are two things that I think stand out with Palm. Firstly, innovation seems to have died. Arguably, Palm's most successful device has been the Treo. While the model number/designations have gotten bigger (600, 650, 700, 750, etc) there hasn't been much innovation The form factor is largely unchanged (a little thinner, no antenna stump), Palm OS has seen little change and my gut feeling is that the move to Windows Mobile was a "jump the shark" moment.

Even the recently announced Foleo looks like the sort of product that was conceived in one person't mind with no real consideration of what the market wants or needs.

Secondly, quality seems to have taken a hit. There are multiple reports (such as here and here) telling us that Palm has had to withdraw a couple of system updates as they cause devices to not be able to connect to the cell-phone network.

These things worry me as the loss of such an iconic player in the handheld market would, if nothing else, reduce the level of competition in the market. Then again, maybe Palm isn't adding much competition to amrket that is currently dominated by the likes of HTC.