“Palm’s paltry sales earn it a downgrade as the company’s triumphant rebirth effort runs into more challenges,” Scott Moritz reports for TheStreet.com. “‘Our checks indicate weak sell-through at Verizon (VZ Quote) after softer than expected marketing support and a weak ad campaign,’ Macquarie Securites analyst Phil Cusick wrote in a research note Tuesday, downgrading Palm to neutral.”
“The bleak assessment on Palm Pre and Pixi sales at Verizon effectively confirms a long running suspicion: The problem with Palm wasn’t Sprint, where Palm phones languished in an exclusive sales agreement last year,” Moritz reports. “The Palm phones arrived quietly at Verizon last month and the marketing push has been nearly absent. Cusick expects AT&T, which gets the Palm phones in May, to be as equally ambivalent on Palm marketing.”
Mortiz reports, “With Palm’s turnaround gambit becoming more of a long shot, investors take flight. [PALM shares shed 9.99% today to close at $8.20.]”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s what we wrote well over a year ago, back in January 2009, just after beleaguered Palm unveiled their Palm Pre and webOS: “Palm’s Pre dog and pony show is nothing more than takeover bait. They simply do not have the resources necessary to create another mobile platform, especially one that is superfluous. If Palm’s Pre is not a ruse, then those responsible are kidding themselves.”
Time for Microsoft to move in. What a bargooooon.
i’m beleaguered too.
Can we see it coming? The Windows Phone 7 Series Brown PixiPre in your palm. And doing that with your palm will make you go blind…
I guess all that screaming and hollering and finger pointing giggling at Apple iPhone regarding “can’t play Pandora while I surf the web” pretty much means NOTHING in the real world. Thats right, freaking tech bloggers who creams up when a device has 100 more features and buzz word features thats useless in real world use. You guys FAIL!
@Jubei
I could care less about listening to Pandora while surfing the web? I listen to my own music, playlist, artist anytime I want and surf the web. Just because you want to doesn’t mean that Apple should change everything they do just to make you happy.
That’s it, if I can’t drive a freak’n Mercedes then screw it, I’m walking from now one.
Good luck with that.
Methinks igads misunderstood my post. You must be new around here.
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Yet beleaguered Palm was able to design a phone and operating system that could run 50 simultaneous apps at the same time, allowing you to both close and switch between them easily:
http://www.precentral.net/palm-pre-plus-vs-palm-pre-multitasking-mayhem
Maybe Apple is the company that should buy Palm so Rubinstein can show Scott Forstall how to get things done. Palm even beat Apple to the idea of gesture areas outside the screen.
Apple should buy Palm for nothing else then the patents they have (and fire everyone working there).
MDN Magic word: economic; as in that would not cost too much
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This is one of R2s problem. He/she is one of those feature or buzzword list addicts. Even if its useless or compromises the integrity of the hardware or usability, he/she doesn’t care. R2 must be able to play Pandora while he/she poops and uses gestures outside the screen to wipe him/herself clean. If thats possible.
did I miss something, or has Zune Tang rebirthed his/her persona into the nom de plume named R2? Sheesh what a wet blanket. This is a Mac / Apple enthusiast site, R2. Get happy. Or at least make your satire more obvious.
dd
MDN MW: away, as in “Go away R2”
Palm’s rating can get lower? I thought it hit bottom years ago.
“Even if its useless or compromises the integrity of the hardware or usability, he/she doesn’t care.”
What about the Palm Pre Cards system is useless or compromises the intregrity of the hardware/usability? Maybe you should click the link and watch the YouTube video of the phone in action before you open your big mouth.
Jubei’s probably is that she can’t step outside the Reality Distortion Field. She’s frightened by what she might find out there.
I actually like the Palm OS much better than just about anything but the iPhone. I would much rather have the Palm OS than say Symbian or any of the craptacular OSes on my last two Verizon phones.
The Palm OS at least is semi-enjoyable.
But yes, Palm seems to be on life-support right now.
Not long now to Palm Sunday. Any miracles expected?
@ R2
Either register or stay away. This BS is getting very tiresome. Every thread is polluted by this multitasking creed. The marketplace has spoken and Palm is going to die
R2
Are you Jon Rubinstein? I thought so!
M$ cannot buy Palm for the OS. They only know legacy code to bind all winmo together. Now RIM on the other hand, they need a modern OS.
Would somebody (perhaps Michael Dell so he can see what’s coming for him) please drive a stake through Palm’s heart. Enough with this lingering death spiral.
Remember the old days when most people thought “Beleaguered Apple” was the name of the company. Bye bye Palm
magic word “corps”.., hey the forgot the “e”.
“Yet beleaguered Palm was able to design a phone and operating system that could run 50 simultaneous apps at the same time”
Too bad people don’t give a shit.
As Roy Orbison would say……. Crying, crying, crying over you!
@R2
“Yet beleaguered Palm was able to design a phone and operating system that could run 50 simultaneous apps at the same time, allowing you to both close and switch between them easily…”
In order to run 50 Palm apps, you would have to run some of them twice
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Seriously, give up on the “multitasking” bullcrap. First, Apple’s mobile products *do* multitask. Second, most people are happy to be able to page between apps, which is *not* multitasking. Third, the most likely way for third party software to run background processes will be through tightly controlled widgets that are (or will become) part of the iPhone/iPad SDK, such as location manager. The iPhone OS works because it is controlled. Nothing is free.
If Palm’s 50-app multitasking OS and phones are so great, then why are they tanking even after the free media-driven “iPhone-killer” advertisement last year for the Pre? Do you own a Palm phone R2?
Maybe iPhone should have a switch named Multitasking On/Off and a little note: Multitasking can drop battery life 80% and if used with external power source heat up the device so much it will shut down.
B b b b but multitasking!
Oh, so you can run 50 or so simultaneous apps on the Pre? Maybe if you have the rest of your life to get anything done. And I am an old Palm user and supporter for about the last 9 years. No Pre for me thank you.
I am not only afraid they have a losing rest-of-life, I would be embarrassed to be affiliated with Palm other than to own a few old PDAs for nostalgia’s sake, just to remember the good old days when Palm cared.
@twodales
I disagree. As far as I’m conserened, everyone is welcome here. I like other opinions.
@ KingMe
You crack me up!