Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Best mobile multitask Palm OS

With Microsoft aping iPhone features right down to killing off multitasking features of third party apps, Palm OS remains the the most relevant mobile OS for users who wish to do more than one task at a time. Until we find out whether or not that rumor about iPhone OS 4.0’s multi-tasking feature for 3rd parties holds water or not. let’s watch that hip Palm ad again shall we?

Yeah, if Palm saturates market with these ads and offers great support and a good app and music store, they may bounce back from the brink, yet.


Thursday, February 25, 2010

Palm’s down

Earlier today, El Jobso deftly covered the demise of Palm. Here’s Ruby’s letter to the troops.

Team,

This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being. On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March.

I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March. In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales.

Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales. To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.

All of these efforts are examples of how we are working to accelerate adoption and grow distribution of webOS. In the next few weeks, your management will work with you to make sure your priorities are laser-focused, primarily on helping to increase sales, improve product quality and differentiate the Palm product experience.

Our goals are taking longer than expected to achieve, but I am still confident that our talented team has what it takes to get the job done.

We’ll schedule an all-hands meeting after our earnings announcement in March, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Go team!!!

jon


Palm swoons in death spiral

Eight months after the debut of their “iPhone-killer” Palm Pre, they’re missing their numbers and lowering guidance. CEO Jon Rubinstein, still in deep denial, actually says that Palm’s phones are the superest, bestest, most amazingest mobile phones in the whole wide world, yet somehow, curiously, “driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated.” Amazing. Good night and good luck, you massive losers.


Friday, January 8, 2010

CES: Ruby says “We don’t pay that much attention to Apple”

John Paczkowski tells us about All Things D’s Kara Swisher and her chat with Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein at CES.  Palm’s CEO flatly states he has never used the world’s most popular smartphone, IE his competition.  Don’t really buy that, and Kara didn’t either.  Note the dubious look on her face.  Really good excerpt here:

“We don’t pay that much attention to Apple….I know it sounds really strange,” says Rubinstein.

“Really?” Kara replies. “You don’t worry about the iPhone?”

“No, I really don’t,” Rubinstein answers.

“I don’t believe you,” says Kara, telegraphing a sentiment I imagine is widely held among the audience.

Rubinstein: “I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.”


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Open source life raft for Palm?

This guy thinks so. I have a better idea. Pull the plug. Liquidize everything, divvy up cash to stockholders, bondholders, etc. and leave town.

Or learn how to sell your damn products!