“AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless could be giving Palm Inc. its last shot at redemption,” Roger Cheng reports for Dow Jones Newswires.
MacDailyNews Take: Beleaguered Palm gets more last shots than a Soviet Olympic basketball team.
Cheng continues, “The nation’s two largest wireless carriers will sell Palm’s products, giving the struggling handset maker some hope in making a dent in the brutally competitive smart phone market. Palm on Thursday confirmed that Verizon Wireless would start selling its phones Jan. 25. AT&T, meanwhile, said Wednesday that it would carry two Palm devices in the coming months.”
“‘Now it’s time to put up or shut up for the company,’ said Roger Entner, an analyst at research firm Nielsen Co.,” Cheng reports.
Palm’s challenges are formidable… Palm’s flagship Pre smart phone won’t enjoy the marquee status it had at Sprint,” Cheng reports. “Demand for the device, meanwhile, appears to be cooling. In the last reported quarter, Palm shipped 783,000 phones to retailers. But consumers only snapped up 573,000 devices.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Snapped up” conjures up images of frenzied buying. We would have used “blew their cash and two years on” instead.
Cheng reports, “Sprint continues to position the device prominently, but it has declined to disclose how well Palm’s Pre or Pixi have sold… While Palm has been able to release two devices, the Pre and Pixi, it lacks the resources to keep churning out new products. As a result, it gets lost in the wave of hype for each new phone [unveiled by competitors].”
“Palm still makes an attractive acquisition target for a handset maker shopping around for a slick mobile operating system, analysts say, but there is little likelihood of a deal in the near term, until there is clarity on which operating systems gain traction,” Cheng reports.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s probably too late for a buyer now, but Ballmer’s still running Microsoft, so Palm has at least a shred of buyout hope remaining. Also, if they keep burning through cash at this rate, any lunatic will be able to buy them soon.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good things don’t happen to those making their last stand. Hence the use of “last.” We’d tell you to ask Custer, but it didn’t work out for him, either (or two of his brothers, his nephew, and his brother-in-law).