“Palm Inc., the maker of the Treo e-mail phone, forecast a wider loss than analysts estimated after customers defected to the BlackBerry and iPhone,” Ville Heiskanen reports for Bloomberg.
MacDailyNews Take: “Treo e-mail phone.” It’s telling when reporters can’t even bring themselves to call it a “smartphone” anymore.
Heiskanen continues, “[Palm] faces new competition from Apple Inc., which released its iPhone in June. ‘This is horrible,’ said Pablo Perez-Fernandez, an analyst with Global Crown Capital in San Francisco. He only advises investors to buy Palm shares if they plan to hold them long term. The company’s product design ‘is just too old to compete,’ he said.”
Heiskanen reports, “Palm also said it would stop giving forecasts for sales and profit. ‘Management is signaling they have no visibility,’ Perez- Fernandez said. ‘This is a really bad report.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in. – Palm CEO Ed Colligan, commenting on then-rumored Apple iPhone, Nov. 16, 2006
Palm is eating crow once again.
Shepherd Jobs has all of you blind. Blind as bats. So sad.
The only phone worth anything is my Nokia N95. Works amazing.
MDN is just another of the sheep alone in the dark.
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. If you like Apple’s Mac, don’t hate Palm. Palm is not the enemy here. Microsoft is. If you want Microsoft’s Dark Ages to end, than that means that it is going to have to be a cohesive effort on the likes of Apple, Palm, Google, Linux, and everyone else against Microsoft.
An Apple monopoly would be just as bad as a MS one. Competition yields innovation. If Microsoft wants to continue to sell Exchange Servers, than it should open them up so that Apple, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Google, and anyone else can access the data.
Palm is on our side. Don’t Hate Palm.
(That said, the Trio does suck.)
@Dallas – I disagree. Palm stopped being “on our side” the minute they sold out and put Windows Mobile on their phones rather than spending the time to make the PalmOS competitive in today’s market. Once they went Windows Mobile, they basically lost any competitive advantage over every other poor selling Windows Mobile device on the market – they’re all the same – crappy.
Palm uses the Microsoft Mobile OS for some of their products, so they are part of the enemy!
While I agree that Palm is not the enemy, not sure who the enemy is in any case, but CEO’s, nor anyone, should not make statements they cannot back up. Palm hasn’t had an innovated product for years, they rested on their backsides while RIM and Apple created a new device, and a new type of user. Microsoft is lost, Palm is lost, RIM is confused, and Apple is the only company currently listening to customers. Other vendors might want to look into the concept of a focus group.
Yes, I know that Palm does employ WinCE for a few phones. And yes, I agree that they should be punished in the market for sitting around with nothing new for the last 5 years. But still, the more people not using Windows the better. Surely you can agree to that.
Now if only Apple would release iTunes for Linux (or some native iPod Support) then I would give out copies of Ubuntu to my “I can’t afford a Mac” friends.
“Palm uses the Microsoft Mobile OS for some of their products, so they are part of the enemy!”
That’s an understatement. Putting Windows Mobile on the Treo is one of the biggest reasons why Microsoft smartphone marketshare went on an upswing. It allowed them to overcome many obstacles the good old fashioned M$ way.
Palm, today, is nothing more than a Windows Mobile hardware manufacturer. They are the enemy.
The enemy in Steve’s mind is Bad Design. It just so happens that much of the competition acts as emissaries for BD, making it a little awkward at dinner parties…
More seriously, there doesn’t really need to be any flesh and blood/ brick and mortar enemy. Apple finds a hole in current implementations of tech, attacks said hole, then kills offending competitors as they race to catch up. No enemy, just quick maneuvering and foresight. Palm is a recent example of the aftermath.
Palm, you should have protected your hole.
The real Palm got sold to Access.
These guys are just handset makers with no OS of their own.
And Palm is also ‘bad’ in that Mac support for their hardware is terrible.
Good riddance.
I see Palm shares are $5.92. Looks like a great opportunity.
I really wanted to see Palm be succesful. Led by me my company even developed a piece of software for the Palm OS back in the Handspring days.
I then even purchased a Treo 700p after using one of their flip phones, but after repeatedly seeing my data be badly synced, struggling through the upload of music and having a terrible web browser experience I switched to the iPhone.
The only things I miss from the Treo is its speakerphone (it was loud loud) and, when it would work, the ability to connect it via Bluetooth to my Powerbook for data access.
@Lord1776
Looks like a great opportunity to lose money to me…
I guess if they didn’t make such crap these days their customers wouldn’t be defecating en masse.
@LorD1776
A great opportunity to short them.
Hold the shares long term? Does that mean using them for wallpaper?
Nokia N95
While I was a mostly happy Treo 650 user for the last couple of years, the propensity of the Treo to crash/reset etc finally reached a critical level of frustration. Not having access to a Canada iPhone I went with an unlocked Nokia N95 based on it “impressive” specification.
The N95 is stable but the software interface is horrible, the e-mail client is very bad, the built-in GPS takes up to 20 minutes to lock in, and the Wi-Fi can not connect to many password protected networks (that my iPod Touch has NO problems with). The camera at 5 MP should be impressive, and is not bad, but because of the very heavy compression, it is really more of a 3 MP camera but still pretty good for a phone camera. Many of the other features of the phone are so deeply buried under the horrendous user interface, that they are in essence not useful or even available.
Paper specs don’t equal real world performance or value. I periodically play with the thoughts of going back to my Treo 650 but REALLY REALLY HOPE that Rogers will get the iPhone into the marketplace soon. I have used the iPhone in the US and from my experience with it and the iPod Touch it beats the N95 hands down.
I know this is a little off topic, but does anyone know of a decent phone (non smart) carried by AT&T;? I need new ones for my wife and myself. Researching these things is making me crazy. I can’t get iPhones now since I spent a fortune on my wife for Christmas. It seems like every positive user review of any model is followed by two negatives. Very frustrating. This is the worst item I have ever shopped for.
Bloodbath
iPhone Nano out MacWorld. That’s right, oh yeah!
F*ck Palm. John Rubenstein… Peace out homie.
RIM is next. Verizon is next. Nokia is next. Windows mobile ha already surpassed.
@ hereMeNowListenToMeLater:
Yeah, I agree… SMS, Phone, iPod. One for the Razr / iPod Nano touting teens…
Palm is on our side?! YEAH RIGHT — THEY HAVEN’T UPDATED PALM DESKTOP FOR MAC IN YEARS! All Mac development at Palm has COMPLETELY STOPPED!!
Having said that, however, the Palm Treo is a vastly superior phone to the iPhone in terms of functionality, and I love my Treo. This is really sad news coming from Palm.