Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. Palm posted its quarterly financial results today, and as it turns out, the company is actually doing better than expected. Losses were lower than expected, sales were higher than expected, so from whatever way you look at it, the future is looking a little brighter. The quarter ended May 31, so sales of the Pre are not part of this one yet.
While analysts had expected a 66 USD cents per share loss, but it was actually “only” 40 USD cents per share. In addition, analysts expected that sales would drop to 80.1 million USD, but the reality is that they dropped to only 86.8 million USD. The period covering these results ended May 31, so the effect of the Pre, launched June 6, is not yet included in these figures. Following these results, Palm shares rose from 14.02 USD to 15.35 USD in after-market trading.
CEO of Palm, ex-Apple Jon Rubenstein, inventor of the iPod, expressed his thoughts on the debut of the Palm Pre. “[It] was a major milestone in Palm’s transformation,” Rubinstein said in the statement, “We have now officially re-entered the race.”
Jim Suva, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in San Francisco, is very positive about the prospects of the Palm Pre. He expects Palm to sell 450000 webOS phones before the end of August. In addition, he expects Palm to sell another 675000 webOS phones during the three months after August.
The good thing about the Pre, and any other possible webOS devices, is that they really need not outsell the iPhone or RIM’s devices in order to be a success for Palm. Some are comparing the sales figures of the iPhone 3GS and the Pre, but this is of course rather nonsensical – the iPhone is at version 3, the operating system is at version 3, the 3GS is sold world-wide, and Apple has a massive brand behind its devices.
Just let Palm do its thing. They’ve released a device – out of nowhere – that has received basically unanimously positive reviews, a device built from scratch, with an operating system built from scratch. That’s no small feat.
I cannot believe 0 comments on palm posts. There should be some comments if people like it or hate it. But no comments? Whats going on?
We all own iPhones and don’t care?
I own an iPhone and hope the Pre & successors succeed. Helps to keep apple on it’s toes.
*sits contentedly on his pile of palm shares*
just wish I’d had the money to buy more at that price. heh.
Since WebOS is based on Linux, it is not built from scratch.
JAL
back-end Linux.
front-end Webkit.
Palm has not had to do a whole lot of programming here. But they have taken what was available and developed a kick-ass interface on top.
There’s no denying that.
JAL
yeah, they didnt code a 15y old kernel (do you think apple made darwin and macosx from scratch maybe? its even older than linux)
but they did code a lot, lot of stuff, and it looks pretty good.
also its using a free os (as in freedom)
i doubt i need to argue about the benefits of a free os
sure android is the same, but apparently the webos is much more streamlined and successful at what it does
Value isn’t derived from merely programming something – it comes from integrating a whole heap of different things together to form a coherent product for the market. Someone had to bring all the components together – and its not an easy thing to accomplish.
Absolutely true, it is quite an accomplishment. However, it is still true that the OS is not ‘built from scratch’, and that that remark is therefore erroneous.
JAL
They didn’t get unanimously good reviews. Plenty of people said the build quality left something to be desired and that the keyboard was next to useless. I also read that the OS is less streamlined (though not as badly as the Android interface.) Nothing they can’t fix, but not unanimous.
Unanimously positive reviews means that eviews in general gave the Pre the thumbs up – it does not mean that none of the reviews had anything bad to say about it.
Uh, no it doesn’t.
Unanimity may be assumed explicitly after a unanimous vote or implicitly by a lack of objections.
Palm has a lot of mediocre reviews as well, as the thread starter said.
Unanimous? Not at all.
Like which?
I’ve read endless amounts of Pre reviews, and they all concluded that the Pre is a wonderful device, but that both the hardware and software have issues. The general conclusion is that the device is good, but with its flaws.
That means that the reviews were unanimously positive.
You are simply misunderstanding me here. Saying “reviews were unanimously positive” does NOT mean “every review was unanimously positive”. In the first statement, the “unanimous” applies to the whole batch of reviews.
Thom, you need to:
1) Get a brain
2) Look up unanimously
Come on mate; at worse his use of the word unanimous was borderline hyperbole if one were to suffer from anal retention. Most of the reviews I have seen online have either been positive or praising. He never said that the product was flawless because all the reviews listed negatives. The fact remains that the reviews, even when the negatives were taken into account, found that the Palm Pre is an excellent device.
I watched and read several reviews of the Palm Pre. I was impressed and I especially liked the fact that it had a real keyboard unlike the iPhone. It had a few rough edges but overall it’s a good phone. I had hoped that they’d make the price competitive but it’s essentially the same pricing model as that of the iPhone which was disappointing. I’ll wait for the second generation model before I get one. I think Palm and iPhone buyers are learning that purchasing the first generation of a device is fraught with risk and problems….just like buying the first generation of a car, it will have some rough edges and some bugs. I liken the first iPhone owners to beta testers for the 3GS model. Palm Pre owners are in the same boat. I’m also glad that the iPhone now has some competition because I’m really tired of hearing the virtues of iPhone.
Edited 2009-06-26 12:06 UTC
I’m disappointed in that the Palm Pre isn’t offered in New Zealand, especially considering that iPhone is with Vodafone – I would have thought that Telecom or Palm might have taken the initiative to get into the market. I find it funny given that Palm has a major presence in New Zealand but it appears that HTC and LG are going to steal some thunder from Palm if they keep stuffing around on the sidelines.
Be glad for Palm. They’re doing okay, and with the launch of the Pr~A(c), they’re doing even better.
I’d hate to see the minds that virtually started the smart phone business (Handspring + SpringBoard phone module) to go away, even if their recent attempts have been less than stellar.
Why does every thread have to break down to a grumbling session? Can’t people be happy for someone’s success? I think it’s great that we have competition and that open source is helping companies innovate without total re-invention.
“Why does every thread have to break down…”
Human nature, my friend.