MacDailyNews Take: “Popular?” It certainly doesn’t sound like it. Buy a dictionary, ABN.
“Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Geldblum estimated that palm has about 1.15 million phones sitting in warehouses or at retail venues. Palm admitted earlier in the year that it had only sold 408,000 of the 960,000 phones that shipped last quarter,” ABN reports. “For comparison purposes, Apple is expected to sell 7.5 million iPhones during the first quarter.”
ABN reports, “[Palm’s] WebOS does not have a large user base and does not have nearly as many third-party applications as the iPhone… Many analysts are predicting the worst for the company.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s “Beleaguered Palm’s Death Week.” Enjoy!
Sorry, I’m not enjoying it. The demise of Palm brings a lot of pain and upheaval to too many people. But for the grace of God go I.
Wow, that was fast! From every iPhone user would switch to switch the lights off as you leave Palm Headquarters. Oh, let the door hit you on the way out!
Hahaha! Love MDN’s take!!
@ spark, Ozzie @ ziggaro. Who cares. Wern’t long ago that every PalmPre site I visited blasted iPhone users as ignorant, stupid & dumb, uninformed Apple fan boys. Well we may be fan boys, but ignorant & uninformed we ain’t. Bye bye suckers, good riddance. BTW how’s that builtin iTunes connection working out fer ya?
Why is MDN so happy about Palm going down?
Apple probably benefits from having Palm around, bringing fragmentation among its competitors.
I’m completely, totally, and utterly with you, roguedog. Palm has had this coming for many years, and despite the pain suffered by their loyal employees, they really deserve this.
Good riddance to buggy whips, too.
I do not feel sorry for Palm. All you have to do is pull that Treo out of the drawer and play with it again for a few minutes. They deserve what they are getting.
A lot of people will be affected by the downfall of Palm. Competition is always good for the end user no matter who the company is – without it there’s no innovation or choice. I don’t enjoy the gloat-fest.
what is this, palm daily news? sheesh!
I’ve been an iPhone owner/user since Day 1, but I liked the Pre, and it would have been my choice had it not been for the iPhone.
Palm’s lack of resources didn’t kill the Pre, it was the carriers and their insistence of controlling features and ecosystems None have any expertise in either area.
That fact alone will insure the eventual dominance of the market by the iPhone (and iPad). It won’t matter how good the handset (tablet) or network, the ecosystem will determine which product prevails, and nobody comes close to the iTunes ecosystem. And they won’t as long as the carriers continue to control the device.
ATT management should be lauded for their willingness to give that up.
@big jobs — Agreed. There’s no joy to be taken in people suddenly becoming unemployed. The coders and min-wage office workers didn’t make Palm’s decisions, management did, but you can be sure it’s management that will sail off with golden parachutes. The rest will be crossing their fingers and hoping the unemployment checks last long enough.
I know that Palm was not that big a threat to Apple, but with less competition comes less innovation. No matter how small, ignorant and incompetent a rival is they will always be a rival. Even for Apple where innovation grow from a consumer perspective, rivals and individual features in rival products will fuel innovation and better products.
The iPhone is not an island, it came due to a discontent with existing phones as an improvement of those phones and semi-smartphones.
Re: Popular?
Maybe he meant Poplar, like the tree. Well, where else would you expect to find Pixis?
Apparently, douchebag Ed Colligan has nothing to say about the matter.
Wuss.
Do what RIM does to make it look like its really popular and its sales are not slowing down.
“Buy one Palm POS and get FOUR, YOU HEARD ME, FOUR POS free!”
There you go, inventory will move fast and problem of their glut, solved.
Here here, another American company down the tubes! Hooray!
I could (MAYBE) see the fun in this if Ed Colligan still ran the show over there.
I just went into a colleague’s office…he had a dusty old palm sitting (well probably dust-fused) in it’s cradle. I have one like that on my desk too. In fact we should have a take a picture of your dusty Palm device contest.
just my $0.02
Palm Pre is a piece of crap. Flush it down the commode baby
why is mdn so happy that one of apple’s competitors is going bankrupt? What the hell is wrong with a little competition? It sucks for the people who have a palm phone and especially for those who are losing their job. = /
but, but it’s got Multi-Tasking?!?!?
mr awesome ‘ain’t’
I don’t get all you nay-sayers.
Palm will be fine as soon as Microsoft releases Windows 7 Mobile Series or whatever the fusk they’re calling it this week.
1.15M Palms in channel inventory?!? Wow, I only estimated about 700k. At the current sales rate, it’ll take 6 months for them to clear that inventory low enough to start up mfring.
@bimi, Mr Awesome
everyone complains about competition, the free market system…well guess what…it spoke…AND PALM’s OUT.
that is what happens in a free market system, the consumers decide the fate of a business, unless you are a banker and you privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
Apple has no competition, they have followers. Name a smart phone that has an impact anywhere close to the iphone.
And how that multitasking work for ya palm? oh right your battery lasts a couple of hours..well that’s still longer than you should hold onto those palm stock shares
Yeah I’m having a hard time enjoying the idea of more good hard working people losing their jobs.
I suggest we just save all the “HA HA I told you” so for the leaders of companies who said Apple couldn’t pull off a cell phone and leave it at that.
Might want to take ABN off your list:
Business News: Update: Palm Not Halting Production of Pre and Pixi Models (NASDSAQ: PALM)
March 22nd, 2010 • Related • Filed Under • by admin
American Banking News reported incorrectly that Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) was halting production of its Pre and Pixi models based on a scoop from MyCE on March 20th. It turns out that the scoop was inaccurate–our mistake.
We received a note from Palm’s director of corporate communications, Derrick Mains, stating that Palm has not announced a production halt.
Blood on the touch screen. It’s a shame too, Palm used to be a pretty innovative company in the PDA field, too bad they couldn’t foresee the trends.
<<We received a note from Palm’s director of corporate communications, Derrick Mains, stating that Palm has not announced a production halt.>>
Corporate BS. We aren’t announcing a production halt, but we aren’t making any either. Why in the hell would they make any more? The supply channel is full of them as it is.
They (Palm) tried to foist a a poorly conceived, poorly developed, and poorly made product on the world, by simply proclaiming it to be the next jesusphone. This result was predictable and inevitable
Many (including Rubenstein) assumed that because MS was able to foist it’s ill conceived, half baked and poorly executed OS on the public so successfully, that it is easy to do. Not so.Like hitting a bullet with a bullet, Windows rise to prominence was an extremely unlikely anomaly. A lucky happenstance requiring the extremely unlikely alignment of several variables.
Technological and any other PROGRESS requires winners and losers. It’s called creative destruction. When a company goes under, you find another job somewhere else.
Otherwise, we would all be driving a horse and carriage instead of cars, and talking on wired rotary-dial phones hooked to manual switchboards.
This “is” the “competition” that everyone claims they want.
Palm’s existence is not necessary to provide competition, there are others who do it somewhat better. Nor is Palm’s presence required to fragment the iPhone’s competition. What Android, win-mobile, and their carriers are doing is sufficient.
@Scot Murphy
Are you sure? Being brought up as a
staunch conservative capitalist, I’ve
always been taught that it was the lazy
unionized American worker that brings
on the demise of an USA company.
Palm!! Hold on till 2020 when WM7 SP1 comes out.
Disclaimer: I am now and have been an iPhone user from the first generation.
I do not usually wish for decreased competition, but I am really glad to see Palm go. As a Mac user, I was often tired of the second class treatment Palm gave to Mac users especially when the were using the old Mac OS. In those days, we didn’t have much choice in PDAs and smartphones. The synchronization never worked right. Yet, they managed to work so perfectly well on Windows.
Mac users are loyal to products that work. Palm lost my loyalty. Good riddance!
but, but, what about palm coming to AT&T;”soon”? poor lil palm.
A lot of people will be affected by the downfall of Palm. Competition is always good for the end user no matter who the company is – without it there’s no innovation or choice. I don’t enjoy the gloat-fest. —big jobs
The notion that there is no innovation without competiton is nothing but an old wives’ tale. Where was the competition while Apple was inventing the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad?
Innovation requires the will to innovate, which is sadly lacking in the business world today. Companies would rather fix prices, recycle yesterday’s hit product, threaten competitors and cook their books than actually do the hard work required to invent something new.
Let’s not gloat about the fall of a great company. I used Palm devices for a long time. I left only 2 years ago, when they essentially stopped innovating.
It’s a crying shame. They had so much potential. But it’s a lesson for everyone. When you lead the pack, you have to make the right moves to stay there. Palm waxed and waned and essentially listened to Engadget and their crazy minions for decision making.
In the end, it’s guys like Steve Jobs who knew what was best for the many and did not and does not cater to the crazy gadget-freaks who want everything in one device and say “it sucks!” when they don’t get it.
Where did multitasking, catering to women and trying to please the intelligentsia get Palm? $4 on the Stock Exchange from $16 a year ago. It’s really sad to see this day. I loved Palm the company. They were once the best that technology had to offer.
Let’s not gloat. Be sad, respectful and above all studious.
I wouldn’t blame Apple solely for their downfall.
I think it is mainly the other phones that the other carriers offer. I mean how many LG, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc… models do they offer.
Attn palm: MAKE A $100 wifi only device! If u make it cheap enough people will buy it, if people have the device developers will make more apps
This story was inaccurate. Palm is not halting production of phones. Apparently this was due to a stop in production for the Chinese holidays.
Palm phones are still being produced.
took me 1 minute with Google to find this out BTW.
@ Anim8me2 (cool name, btw – good Rush song) –
I think you’re confuisng the “Chinese holidays” story from last month’s not-exactly-announced production stoppage with the current situation. At this time, all Palm can say is that they’re not announcing a halt in production.
@ Noodlefarmer – Bang on target… they’re not “announcing” a halt in production, just like they didn’t exactly “announce” it last month, either. What company in their right mind is going to keep manufacturing more phones when they have well over 500,000 pieces of unsold inventory gathering dust? And what investor would want them to do so? There’s no point in churning out more inventory just to keep up appearances, when they can’t even sell what they’ve already made.
Yet another company destroyed by TNBT thinking. TNBT is The Next Big Thing. Palm like so many other companies set it’s focus on TNBT and ignored the products it was already producing and the user that were already putting money in there pockets. Once palm started lusting after the phone business it abandoned the PDA field. The life drive could have been the iPod touch but they abandoned it.
@ Gregg Thurman
“ATT management should be lauded for their willingness to give that up.”
I agree. I don’t know why the ATT CEO gets dissed on Mac sites like he does, especially since he was the *only* carrier who was willing to break away from the typical control and cut-throat data structuring in order to facilitate Steve Jobs’ demands and that newfangled iPhone. That one move has benefitted everyone as the other carriers have scrambled to compete. It has brought prices down while service (3G) has become much better.
That said, cell packages are still too expensive for what you get. You can thank Dumb Dads (paying stupidly high fee IM rates to please their texting daughters) for that. I just wish if they’re going to charge me by GB, why can’t I just pay on a per GB used basis. Nobody would accept the current form of fee structuring from their cable modem provider.
@Gabriel
The information about the holidays came directly from the correction article on the same site as the original article.
So I was citing the site.
While it makes sense to halt production if there are 1.15M devices in channel inventory, if they are coming to AT&T;, then they need to fill that channel, even if they have overstuffed Sprint and Verizon. It’s not very easy to move inventory from a retailer you have already shipped to.
“what is this, palm daily news? sheesh”
No that would be the other 28 tabs you have open.
*ahem
It really is sad to watch Palm’s demise unfold. I’d really like to see them stick around as competition. But bad management is bad management. And this sounds an awful lot like a death rattle.
*COUGH* *COUGH* *WHEEEZ*
LATE BREAKING NEWS:
American Banking News have yanked their Palm article off the net. IOW they 404ed it.
Searching around the net I found that a very similar report was made on February 11th, and was found to be in error. At that time Palm responded with:
“Palm regularly adjusts its product manufacturing levels to manage inventory. In anticipation of the Verizon Wireless launch and Chinese New Year, we increased production levels prior to February, and anticipate ramping production back up after the Chinese New Year ends.”
It is quite possible that American Banking News tripped over the old misinformation from February, noticed their blunder and 404ed the page in a panic.
The February article:
http://www.phonedog.com/2010/02/11/uhoh-palm-pre-pre-plus-and-pixi-production-halted/
FALSE:
http://twitter.com/palm/status/10884908148
Who cares? Less phones for the eventual dumpster fire.