Yagottabe Kidding

Thoughts on the Blackberry Network Fail

What isn't "smart" about this outage is that RIM apparently puts into place software updates that are inherently broken from the start.

I think they need to CLOSELY examine their software development structure, the management oversight of it, and their "QA" - the latter put in quotes for the obvious reason.

4 Mobile Predictions for the New Year

W.r.t Palm getting bought (HA HA HA!) just what price are we talking about here?

$5 billion?

[don't forget the REAL share count that includes the Preferred Shares getting converted - we're talking 200+ million shares and the CURRENT stock price is $12 and the current debt that needs to be paid off is $400 million and one should assume there is SOME sort of premium on top of that]

$300 million like the outrageously expensive purchase of PalmSource and PalmOS?

Just what are we talking here?

Wouldn't Android simply be cheaper all around?

The Unlocked Phone Movement Gets a Big Boost

> There is definitely a price war brewing...

Can companies like Palm handle a price war?

I don't think so.

We're going to see some...er..."consolida...

Apple Gaining Ground in Smartphone Race

The survey was NOT of "4255 consumers" but instead "4255 high income high education senior tech-field consumers".

I think that may have import w.r.t. how well this survey is representative of the general phone consumer population.

When Will Nokia Wake Up?

Perhaps Nokia has decided the "smartphone segment" isn't much of a segment relative to their other segments so are participating strictly because they have a need for a presence.

When featurephones have all the capability that smartphones have with, literally, some minor details excluded (in fact, pundits are going through excruciating convolutions to define "featurephone" and "smartphone" now so they don't totally overlap), why produce a smartphone?

How Big Will Android Get?

Good grief - someone actually noticing the ridiculousness of number of significant digits used by some sites!

What!? Did you take a math course or something and actually REMEMBER what it taught?

'Bout time someone did.

Good article.

Android, iPhone Ride Rising Tide

How is "marketshare" computed? Do those who calculate "marketshare" rely on sell-through numbers from the various manufacturers? If not, how else do they get (number of units sold by manyfacturer X)/total units by everyone)?

Now that we know Palm reports "sell-through" numbers that INCLUDE sales by their main (Pre) distributor, Sprint, to retailers (and, quite likely, even sales to distributors - those who sell to retailers )- that is, NOT end-consumers and NOT part of any "marketshare" - how is their marketshare number computed?

Smartphones: Is Image Really Everything?

Engadget refuses to reveal who paid for that "report".

Reading Palm: Pre Sales and the Secondary Offering

Palm at first said (everything paraphrased) "sell-in and sell-through were majorly Pre". When an analyst threw those words back in Palm's face by saying "You said sell-in was majorly Pre and sell-through was majorly Pre" the CFO came back and said "We didn't say that - we said sell-in plus sell-through was majorly Pre" - that's an apples and oranges combo as other posters have pointed out. We EASILY can (correctly) assume sell-in was almost entirely Pre. If Palm sold-through ONLY, say, 200,000 Pres then sell-in and sell-through could be ambiguously quantified as "majorly Pre" even though sell-through would have been majorly NOT Pre.

Sometimes it's what they do NOT say that's important, huh?

Analyst Gets Hyper-Bullish on RIM

On Aug 19 10:13 AM Wireless Wiz wrote:

> Margins will surely compress in time, but volumes will more than
> compensate for that...

That was not Palm's experience with the Centro - many believe it had outstanding volume yet literally made no money for Palm due to below-profitable margins.

The Commoditization of the 'Dellphone'

Commoditization of the cellphone space is exactly what that RBC "analyst" didn't take into account. Lack of profit margins will kill the less-than-nimble. The HTCs and Nokias of the world, able to spew out a dozen phones every couple months, should do okay (but not liking it) but whither the two-phones-a-year companies like Palm? Can they afford perpetual 15% margins?

Exuberant Forecasts for Apple, RIM and Palm - RBC

See this:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

and its comments.

Analyst Gets Hyper-Bullish on RIM

This "analyst" apparently thinks smartphones will continue to demand a super premium as they take over the phone space. Strangely, dumb phones once were the "smartphones" (actually ONLY phones) of the cellphone space. Where are they priced now? Then featurephones were the smartphones of the cellphone space. Where are they priced now? Then along came smartphones. - Wait! Where are they priced now? How much is that, for example, iPhone 3g? When smartphones become the commodity that dumbphones are now, all those outrageous stock price numbers will seem just as ridiculous as they are. Give ti a year or so...or less.

iPhone 3GS Owners Are Happy, Good for Apple

That survey was invalid simply due to lack of respondents - the results MIGHT reflect reality but surveying only =200= iPhone users (WHICH 200?) is so into the noise-level of iPhone users it's just silly.

And they "surveyed" 40...yes, only 40...Pre users at the same time.

Why is this even newsworthy?

Palm Pre: Are Returns Slowing Growth?

The 117,000 number was changed to 55,000 in an update in the original article; it should be changed here, too.

I'd like to know where EITHER number came from, however, since I've NEVER seen such a number mentioned in years and years of Palm/Handspring watching.