“Caitlin Spaan, Palm’s vice president of carrier marketing will be leaving the company shortly as well, we’ve learned,” Siegler reports. “This was likely not an easy decision to make for Spaan, she’s been with the company for 14 years.”
Full article here.
Erick Schonfeld reports for TechCrunch, “Palm right now is a disaster. Its sales are going nowhere, its market share is plummeting, and try as it might, it can’t even find a buyer. Industry sources tell us that a major restructuring and management shakeup is imminent and CEO Jon Rubinstein may be replaced.”
“Palm clearly needs to be bought at this point if it is going to survive, and Rubinstein may not be the right person to make that sale,” Schonfeld reports. “Rubinstein came from Apple, where he was head of hardware. He was recruited by Palm’s biggest investor Elevation Partners. Rubinstein is great engineer, but not a great marketer. It appears he is having trouble selling Palm, even as a distressed asset.”
Schonfeld reports, “The writing is on the wall.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The writing’s been on the wall for quite some time now. For example, here’s what we wrote over 15 months ago, 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. – MacDailyNews Take, January 21, 2009
Good on you Ruby you vein wannabe
@breeze…..SB vain.
Vain..Vein…Vane. All mean different things. Spell-checker won’t catch them.
Maybe now Is a good time for Mr. Rubenstein to try an iPhone. Only a few months ago he talked like he never needed too.
@ron but the cmd+crtl+D dictionary command will…
Should Apple buy Palm for the intellectual property? If nothing else to keep it out of the big G’s hands?
Bono must be writing a bluesy song whilst reading his investment reports…
Maybe potential Palm buyers are waiting for the time when Palm sells off its assets in pieces. It’s patent portfolio. WebOS. Hardware design. Etc. When things get REALLY bad.
If you bought the whole company, you’d have to support current Palm Pre and Pixie customers, since most those phones are still under contract with the carrier for two years.
Heeere’s Jonny!
Industry sources tell us that a major restructuring and management shakeup is imminent
…is that “imminent” as in the “imminent” announcements of Mac OS X updates we’ve seen in the recent past? Because then it might take a few more months.
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Well, I was wrong. (Wr…wr..wraaoooohhnggggg as Fonzie would say)…
Last May or so, I said Palm wouldn’t last the summer. Then I said they wouldn’t last the year (2009).
I guess I’m just as lousy a tech analyst as the rest of the tech analyists.
My new prediction: Palm won’t last the year
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Too bad, tho, they used to have some pretty cool stuff.
What do you know…
Ed Colligan, PALM’s previously ousted CEO was right after all…
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Right sentiment… but applied to the Wrong Guy and Wrong Company!
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Maybe they should sell the shares pro Bono?
Ok. Let’s be clear here.
The Palm Pre is going to kill the iPhone because the iPhone does not have multi-tasking, and the Pre does. End of story.
… What’s that? [garbled whispering]
Ok, I’m back. Let me correct that. The HP Slate is going to kill the iPad because the iPad does not have Flash, and the HP Slate does.
End of story.
Right?
[MDN Magic word: “Justice.” As in… “THERE IS JUSTICE!”
C’mon MDN, can’t you expand your vocabulary just a bit and stop overusing the word “Beleaguered”?
You know, there’s this cool thesaurus widget you should download…
@ BiteanAAPL – If you were more familiar with the press coverage of Apple during its darkest days, you’d understand why “beleaguered” gets special overuse in this manner here.
Will Palm’s demise be snappier! I hope Elevation loses their collective asses.
Anybody know exactly why MDN is so obsessed with eliminating all the competition? How is that good for us who depend on Steve’s obsession with continuing to outsmart the whole of the tech world. When he succeeds, then what?
@lukeskymac
Thanks for the cmd+crtl+D dictionary command ! Cool!
Dude, you haven’t been paying attention.
1) Steve is not motived by competition. Steve is motivated by his own vision. Unlike Microschoft and others you may relate to, Apple is marching to its own drummer, not to the industry, not to competitors, not to anyone. Apple does not require competition at this point. Apple will continue to innovate, period. It’s in the DNA of the company now. The vision has sunk in and will remain for a long time to come. It’s only a question of how fast, and how effective they can make it happen.
2) Seeing Palm die is payback for all the crap BS shouting and putdowns they gave Apple’s iPhone. They are inept, arrogant and were Jonzing to put Apple down. Not to mention copying Apple, legal or not. They are eating their own words. This is justice.
Though we all feel for the lower pecking order engineers and workers who may lose their job due to inept leadership at that company.
MDN word: class. Apple is showing class.
@BiteanAAPL
“C’mon MDN, can’t you expand your vocabulary just a bit and stop overusing the word “Beleaguered”? You know, there’s this cool thesaurus widget you should download…”
Although I’m getting tired of it being used so often on MDN, Gabriel is right when he says “If you were more familiar with the press coverage of Apple during its darkest days, you’d understand why “beleaguered” gets special overuse in this manner here.”
But, no problem, there’s a new word out there for Apple especially seeing as how it’s quarterly revenue was only a billion behind Microsoft, and will soon surpass it, and that is…
BigLeaguered !
People can now call Apple BigLeagured all they want! lol
I do not celebrate the struggles of a company whose products I once used, and who was very innovative at one time. With their Handspring Treo phone module, they were essentially the first smartphone that I came across around 2002. It was pretty cool to see that smartphone module operate and get a true glimpse of the future! The Palm OS always maintained some Mac OS desktop sync ability…unlike other platforms which excluded the Mac. The Palm PDA’s were good products…and very useful personal data organizers. I would rather Palm prosper than sneaky Google’s Android.
Thank you Palm and Handspring employees for your very fine work over these 15 years of mobile transformation!
I feel sorry for the good folks at Palm who stand to lose jobs because the upper management had no clue about running a company. I think MDN needs to drop the animosity now – bring forth the pity already.
There is no way Apple is going to buy Palm as long as Rubinstein is with the company. I wonder if this is an attempt to open up the bidding to Apple?
Cheers
Well said. It’s not a competition. Apple success does not require that another company needs to fail. Apple just needs to continue making well thought-out products that customers want to buy. However, I find it immensely gratifying that all these companies that actively tried to get Apple to fail are all suffering from their own short-sightedness.