Palm sales 'lower than expected,' revenues to miss targets
By Nilay Patel 
posted February 25th 2010 9:50AM
posted February 25th 2010 9:50AM
posted February 25th 2010 9:50AM
Palm Pixi plus
HP Pre 3
Palm Pre plus
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@Pavelz
Best post here!
Love my Pre, both the hardware and software. The hardware beats anything Apple has ever designed. Love the polished river rock feel in the hand. There is no mobile device on the market that handles multitasking as well as webOS. I honestly could not switch to iPhone or Android without feeling like I was sacrificing great functionality. LOVE the Touchstone and the way the phone handles search.
Palm should be on all carriers by now. Oh well it's a great phone. I'm very glad I have it.
2 negative Palm articles, 2 days in a row. Anyone really surprised by this 'miss'?
Dont bet on it, no reason Nokia would want it.
I would still buy one unlocked gsm online but they don't sell them. So I can only assume they don't want my money
One of Palm issues is their hardware, it needs to feel more expensive to entice the public.
I'm sure the Pre is pretty good by now but I got it on launch day (on Sprint) and the thing was horrible for about 6 months. Just awful. Very slow, missing lots of features, unreliable, and the hardware itself just fell apart. The slidder broke, the screen had scratches all over it, the touchscreen was VERY inaccurate causing the UI to be completely unusable in places. Meanwhile I have a 2 year old iPhone never used in a case that works perfectly. A 4 month old HTC Hero that replaced the Pre, never used in a case, that looks brand new. Palm cheeped out and rushed the Pre out with bad software. Like I said, I'm sure it's fine now but they got a terrible reputation even among Palm fans by doing this.
I'm a developer of mobile devices. I have iPhone 3GS, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre Plus, WinMO, Nokia Symbian and Blackberry. Palm Pre is by far the best device I have. The interface is really intuitive, is multitasking and light. When I used Palm Pre for first time, the multitasking interface makes iPhone soooooo 80’ like DOS. WebOS is really amazing….
Droid? Give me a break, Droid is like Vista, really heavy, applications and the OS crashed all the time, the interface requires few days to understand (and Verizon you right!! Droid is soooo macho).
Blackberry is amazing for enterprise email. Nokia and WinMo? well they are just Ok.
Press is not helping Palm Pre too much….
Cisco should buy them...they're sitting on about $30B cash and probably could get Palm for about $2B. They've been toying with the consumer space and could integrate their corp telecom, settop box and flipcam tech into the next generation pre. plus they have a strong corporate sales force that could sell directly to enterprise clients. Just a thought...
@cwebb227
Doubt Cisco wants to sell cell phone or develop phone OS's
Really annoyed by the lack of apps in Canada.... it's been six months and still no paid apps.
Wheres that bagholder commenter ToniCipriani? No comment today?
I had the Palm Pre Plus for about a week. It was a pretty good phone, but it was noticeably slow in launching apps and they completely lost me with the "Smartphone for Mom" marketing campaign. I've since returned it and bought myself an iPhone 3GS. I'm much more satisfied with my newest purchase.
@kceezy
Did you say you left Verizon for AT&T?
@kceezy
My wife and I own the Palm Pre and love it. And we have had it for close to 9 months. The Palm Pre Plus at Verizon is better than the iPhone in my opinion. That Palm Pre Plus can run 50 applications at the same time while running Electronics Arts 3D game "Need for Speed" at full acceleration. The iPhone can only run one developer app.
Verizon labeled this phone as a "MOMS" phone now guys will not buy it Verizon just killed your sales Palm
Too bad they didn't start out on verizon or AT&T. I like the pre
What about we people on the other side of the ocean get them? I still love this more than any other phone, but the arrival of Windows Phone 7 Series surely has the potential to grab my love.
With names like Pre and pixi and you blame Verizon marketing?
Beside their marketing, I think Palm went wrong in rushing their phone into the market. It wouldn't have killed them to wait 6 months and sort out the numerous issues that have plagued the Pre.
I've been wanting a Pre for a while now, but with a possible new iPhone on the horizon, I won't commit to buying a Pre. But I HATE Job's refusal to run Flash on the iPhone; not having Flash makes for a lousy web experience and all the blowhard statements about Flash being buggy won't change that fact.
I don't think the future is too bright for Palm.
On Bloomberg and CNBC today, analysts came on and to a man all basically said that Palm was a dead man walking/a dead company with little point to investing in them.
The way I see it, they're better off shopping around WebOS for licensing or an outright purchase. I would think that Samsung or Nokia would be interested in WebOS, as I don't think Bada or MeeGo have much of a chance of working out for their respective parent companies.
@Johnny Tremaine
No company is stupid enough to buy into Palm and enter into a losing battle with Google/MS/Apple/RIMM.
@Johnny Tremaine,
A lot of these analysts are not long term investors. They are gamblers.
Here is the fact, Palm was blindsided by Verizon - plain & simple! The Verizon sales people were redirecting Palm customers to other phones - this is unprofessional and unethical. That caused Palm to miss its third quarter estimate. The analysts do not care about the facts, all they look at are the numbers.
Palm has over $500 million in cash, enough money to keep them going for over one year. They have already met with Verizon management who have agreed to fix the problem.
Palm should go back to its roots, but rather than a small handheld Pilot, get in and set some standards for how this blooming Tablet market should be. Offer features that the iPad won't.
I love my Pre, and though I wish it was a bit snappier and the battery life was better, the OS is great and can easily keep up with Apple. (I say keep up because of the smaller engineer base they have.)
But 9-10" WebOS tablet would blow an iPad or any Android tablet away!
Palm need more ads., marketing.. have a palm stall at the Verizon retail outlets.. start incorporating it into their ads targeted at business users. The ads they released, along with those as usual stupid verizon ads.. will never get them anywhere!
I really really like the Pre Plus,but I live in Belgium so i can't buy one... If Palm dies, it will be sad... I'd like to buy the Pre Plus, so if they are gone, it never comes to my country :-(
1) I ACTUALLY OWN a Pre
2) I work at a tech company
3) I am not a "stay @ home mom" (I'm a dude...totally shocking, Verizon)
4) I have not had any problems with my Pre...ANY
5) I'm about to get Flash in the next day or so...why isn't that enough to kill the iPhone?
it probably didnt help that they launched their savior phone on an equally as dead carrier. i do feel bad for them though, the pre is a good phone.
I don't understand it. This device and WebOS is absolutely fantastic and I like it far better than anything out there today. Palm should be doing FAR better. I just don't get it. Its like some wicked spell or something. Does Palm have enough capitol to develop new hardware? Or maybe start allowing WebOS out to handset manufacturers like HTC or Samsung or Sony? There has GOT to be something Palm can do!
@Thor e Right there with you. Some of the complaints are fair with the slowdown and lag in the interface. I appreciate what the phone can do so much I will tolerate that lag. This is the first gadget I've had in a long time that I haven't gotten tired of after six months. Given how good Palm has been about providing updates and adding features they've got me hooked.
Before lambasting Palm I wish people would give it a fair shot before deciding.
They didn't learn anything from last time.
Took way too long to get GSM version out. Momentum was gone.
I'm personally dying to have a Pre plus (or at least a normal pre) here in Switzerland but oddly Palm ignores that Europe could be a big market to hit... I can find Motorola Milestons, HTC Magic and Heroes but... where's Palm?
The Palm Pre is a good device with a great OS that delivered on it's goods too late into the game. Palm got folks riled up at CES2009 and simply didn't work to keep the device in the mainstream.
It really is a great choice for those in the market for a decent device with a pretty interface and a good service carrier. That said, the app catalog simply isn't as robust as its iPhone and Android counterparts, even with Preware.
The flagging hardware problems didn't do the device any justice either. I had mine swapped 5 times before giving up and going back to the iPhone. I miss my excellent Sprint service, but I'm glad I don't have to deal with the GPS and keyboard issues anymore.
@mpeters13,
You must be trying to push your iPhone very hard. Sprint said that the hardware quality was the same as their other smart phones. Over 90% of the Palm Pre phones sold do not have any hardware issues. How come my family bought two Palm Pre phones in June 2009 and owned them for approximately 9 months with "absolutely no" problems. Your story is inconsistent with the evidence. If the phones had the problems you alleged, it would be front page news!
i've had this phone for a week and dislike it intensely. it takes 3 to 5 seconds from when you hit "reply" to an email, to when you can actually start typing. there are very pronounced lag issues when trying to do anything, and it's annoying. and the battery life, even when i have one or two applications open, is horrendous. from 7am to noon, it will only have 50% charge left. i don't mind the keyboard because i'm used to the palm centro, but come on - this thing will not sync with palm desktop!!! It will not import addresses from gmail either.
UGH!
@wtfbbqmate,
Your phone must be defective, get it changed! My battery lasts from 1 to 2 days. I use my phone for hours of music and Internet and it can still take me through the whole day. And the performance is pretty fast.
These phones also come with a 1 year manufacturer warranty. I have had my phone for close to 9 months and it has been rock-solid!
Why is the palm sitting on what looks like some tweed??
Well, Palm has $500 million cash!
Verizon sales reps had other ideas when Palm's customers came in to buy the Palm Pre. They sold these customers on other phones. That does not make Verizon look good. Apparently the problem is being fixed.
All this discussion is about 3 months of sales only! I remember when the iPhone was released and its sales decreased a few quarters later. Apple immediately fixed the problem. Guess what, Palm is doing the same, with Verizon's cooperation.
"Palm webOS is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel with proprietary components developed by Palm"
Yuck no wonder it is failure consumers don't like their products on a un reliable OS such as linux, how hard is to develop your own OS like Apple. May be other mobile companies should learn from this and stay away from linux...