SharonW

Palm: Is the End Near?

And pages four and five of AdMob's Mobile Metrics report ought to make the author cringe. Amazing how in just three months a "supposedly poor selling phone" grabbed a 9% mobile web share and becoming the third most widely used smartphone for the web. They creamed Microsoft Mobile in three months and are gaining on long established RIMM!

metrics.admob.com/wp-c...

Palm: Is the End Near?

Biggs is an idiot who knows less than nothing about Palm. Palm has already denied the lay off rumor. Moreover, the $79 price was a limited time offer by who? Oh yeah, the supreme price under-cutters Walmart! Amazon sold out their Pres this weekend and it is currently their number one seller in cellphones. Both buy their phones from Sprint and are attempting to launch their cell phone shops very competitively. Everywhere else the Pre is $149.

Palm just secured a second round of funding that was over-subscribed. They've got plenty of cash to stay the course while producing new product, the Pixi, and producing for multiple countries now not just the U.S.

The Pre launched in Canada just one month ago, and is scheduled to launch in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and Italy in Oct. Then it goes to Verizon in three months and AT&T.

God, if you're going to criticize, at least have and use real facts.

Palm: Despite Upbeat Results, Challenges Up Ahead

Thanks. That's what I thought. :D

Palm: Despite Upbeat Results, Challenges Up Ahead

@yagottabe - Ah, I see where my confusion arose. I just re-looked at Palm's report. This is what threw me, from the opening statement:

"These results include the effects of subscription accounting treatment required by GAAP.(1) In accordance with this methodology, revenues and cost of revenues for the Palm® Pre™ smartphone are deferred and recognized over the product’s estimated economic life."

But the Non-GAAP Financial measures near the end clarify the non-GAAP assumptions:

"Palm eliminates the effect of subscription accounting (current sales deferred to future periods) to provide more transparency into Palm’s underlying sales trends. Management uses the non-GAAP measure Adjusted Revenues to evaluate growth rate, revenue mix and performance relative to competitors. Management uses the non-GAAP measures of Adjusted Gross Profit and Adjusted Gross Margin to measure operating performance based on current period sales and to facilitate ongoing operating decisions. These
financial measures are not consistent with GAAP because they do not reflect deferral of revenues and product costs for recognition in later periods."

Have I got it right now? Although the 60,000 Pres delivered by May 29th would be a guess as they did not give any numbers on the Pre deliveries or Pros. And given the fact that their margins improved, I'd suspect that their newer product line has better margins than the old which will be eliminated.

Additionally, Zachs didn't even mention enterprise interest which has been surprisingly strong. I recently read a Gartner report that recommended enterprise IT heads should purchase a Pre to familiarize themselves with it as demand is expected to be strong and Palm is currently in the process of completing a complete enterprise package that will allow IT to do remote wiping and better password requirements, etc. Currently, only the owners can remotely wipe. The completed enterprise package is expected to be complete in two months.

I also understand that both Oracle and SalesForce will be completing software for the Pre for CRM. I think RIMM may have more to worry about from Pre competition than AAPL.

If analysts failed to take into account any Pre deliveries though in making their estimates, wouldn't that be their own fault? Thus not invalidating the surprisely better report.

Palm: Despite Upbeat Results, Challenges Up Ahead

"Although revenue fell sharply in the quarter it exceeded our expectation of $75.0 million as well as consensus estimates of $80.3 million. This was due to strong demand for its recently unveiled Palm Pre. "

Man, you call yourselves analysts? It had nothing to do with strong demand for the Pre. The Q4 09 quarter ended on May 29th. The Pre didn't launch until June 6th. About the only thing that could be on their books from the Q4 quarter related to the Pre are R&D and COG, but most certainly not revenue. Such faulty assumptions give the appearance that the Pre only added to their revenues in an exceedingly minor way, when they added nothing at all because it hadn't yet sold any Pres.

Going forward they will be using subscription accounting like Apple does. I surely hope your analysis has improved by then.

Nonetheless, if people continue to disbelieve the Pre story and keep on shorting this stock, it's to my advantage being long PALM. These short squeezes are total joy.

A Second Opinion on Palm Pre's App Numbers

Palm doesn't have to "beat" Apple to be succesful. There is plenty of market share available for the three major competitors in the smart phone market. The losers will be those phone makers that have not created top-quality, smoothly-operating smart phones at affordable, subsized prices.

The game is really the growth of the smart phone market share in the universe of all cell phones.


On Jun 21 03:58 PM Network Effect wrote:

> You may be right, for the small customer base that the Pre has, they
> may be downloading a lot. Who cares in my opinion. The reality is
> that Apple does have the largest mobile ecosystem and it is now growing
> itself. The self-perpetuating cycle between buyers and sellers is
> now in place with the iPhone/Pod/Touch/App Store and it cannot be
> beaten by anyone except Apple itself. The only thing that will tear
> this down is poor execution on Apple's part ... and we all know where
> Apple stands on execution. Unfortunately for a lot of companies and
> industries, this snowball is going to continue to roll down hill
> and no one can stop it. Even if Palm or RIMM or anyone for that matter
> comes out with better technology, it wont matter. The value lies
> in the ecosystem, and you can't build one when there is already a
> dominant player in the market. Someone might be able to carve out
> a niche in a vertical market if they beat Apple to the punch. This
> is the strategy all these other phones should be going after - build
> out a mini-ecosystem in as many small vertical segments as they can
> before Apple gets there.

A Second Opinion on Palm Pre's App Numbers

"So the user base of the App Store was ~7,500,000 phones when it launched. The launch user base of the Palm store was zero — same as the Android Marketplace, which is doing just fine, thank you. This isn’t a throwaway statistic, it’s the main problem with the comparison. An established user base approaching 10 million people and growing the way a hit year-old phone should is more than a slight advantage, it’s a game-changer. So let’s get proportionate." - Devin

Devin, I whole heartedly agree with your premise and would go further to say that Tech Crunch isn't merely biased or savage, but just plain FAULTY in its comparison. Yours would be the proper comparison.

Tech Crunch's comparison would be like comparing the number of calls made on land lines the year prior to the release of cell phones and the number of cell phone calls made in the first month of their release. It's just stupidly and blatantly wrong.

Moreover, Tech Crunch fails to take into account that Palm while still holding on to the SDK for another two months has said "Beginning immediately, we’ll accelerate the growth of the early access program, expanding as quickly as resources allow. Over the next few weeks, the program will grow from hundreds to thousands of developers."

All statistics will change rapidly when those thousands of developers are able to release their apps to the Pre even before the rest of the developer world is granted access to the SDK.

Thanks for a proper perspective. I've grown tired of witless, biased comparisons of apples to oran...palms.

BTW, I stopped by my local Sprint store on Friday, during a down pour. The store was packed. They are getting new shipments of Pres daily, but there is still a waiting list of 70 names which is being added to as well as subtracted from daily as the shipments come in.

Last, but not least, let me remind some here of the some 35,000 odd apps out there for previous Palm products that can still be used on the Pre with the emulator. Apple did not invent the app concept.

The Pre Will Launch Days Before a Likely iPhone Buzz Saw

Judging from the lack of dispute on facts, but the great amount of negative feedback my posts gleaned, it would appear that there are a lot of really pissed off shorts here. Can't say I blame them after a day like yesterday or the last month for that matter. :D And with 29% of the stock being shorted, man, if they're wrong we'll see a squeeze the likes of the banks and the "stress test."

The Pre Will Launch Days Before a Likely iPhone Buzz Saw

On comeback kids, I can't agree with you more. People seem to forget that Apple was a comeback kid having once been given up for dead.

Frankly, both AT&T and Apple seem to be running a bit scared ahead of the Pre. I've been reading multiple articles about price drops for service and the iPhone. There was an analyst just on Fast Money that said AT&T was even considering a voice-only plan for the iPhone. How freakin' absurd is that? Why would anyone buy an iPhone only for phone calls? LOL


On May 18 05:27 PM Rg2 wrote:

> Palm needs what America, herself, needs now and going forward: A
> comeback. Both are on their knees and vulnerable currently. The only
> way either is going to resurge is to innovate its way out of their
> respective slumps.
>
> There are many who say Palm is too late to the market-relevance party,
> a once-respected originator of PDA wizardry who lost her way, lost
> her paranoia with regard to the competition, and fell victim to value
> migration. Does this sound a bit like America's story?
>
> They both lost their fear. And fear is a powerful driver of excellence.
>
>
> Steven Jobs, as great as he is, has fear in abundance. The perpetual,
> ever-evolving pace of tecnological change necessitates that technology
> companies constantly look over their shoulder while keeping a keen
> eye to market leadership. Fact is, no one or two companies should
> dominate a market (APPL, RIMM), where consumers are deprived of the
> innovation of their brethren, of competition.
>
> I love APPL products, and RIMM products, and various others, because
> the competition among them makes them all better--and we, consumers,
> the better for it. I love Palm, probably more for its story, its
> underdog position, more than anything.
>
> As an investor, I'm cautious to remove emotion from an investment
> decision; therefore, I don't want to invest in PALM based on sentiment,
> but with logical, having-researched-the-... common sense. Yet, still,
> I'm rooting for the "little tech that could" as a metaphor for America
> herself.
>
> I want GM and Chrysler to make breathtaking, emotive, roadworthy
> vehicles again (like Ford is doing with the 2010 Taurus and Fusion
> hybrid). Like PALM, many have said the door has closed on the American
> carmakers, their market relevance and American consumer trust evaporated--while
> China and India et al salivate at the prospect of ever-increasing
> world-markets share.
>
> Everyone's at liberty to be partisan consumers, to patronize a favored
> brand or company. But when some actually "root" for the demise of
> a home-grown American company such as a PALM--the many jobs and tax
> base the company represents--it's an interesting commentary, no?
>
>
> Surely, the market rewards innovators, deft managers, superior companies,
> and the market will have its say on PALM; does it have the chops
> to compete with the behemoths? Perhaps, perhaps not.
>
> For sure, it has the audacity to try.
>
> I'm pulling for PALM not simply for my inconsequential investment
> in the company (no matter what it does, I won't get rich). I'm pulling
> for it vicariously as I'm pulling for America herself.
>
> We need our companies to compete and succeed, all of them. When China
> or India become the dominant players on the world market, that's
> not good for America, no? Just as when AAPL or RIMM become the dominant
> forces . . . .
>
> PALM needs what America needs right now: A Comeback. I'm pulling
> for both.

The Pre Will Launch Days Before a Likely iPhone Buzz Saw

To the author of the article regarding this statement:

"The other big variable still unknown about the Pre is its pricing. It seems likely that it will be around the $199 that the iPhone is after subsidy, but the details of a recent survey suggest that Palm thinks the Pre is worth $542.01, which is ludicrous."

I don't think the survey suggested that at all. I think your facts are screwed up or you're mischaracterizing them. The survey conducted by iSuppli suggested that the parts cost of the Pre was $138 which is less than the iPhone and the Blackberry. The $542.01 price was guessimated by bloggers from the Sprint Palm Pre give away sweepstakes which included the Touchstone charger and one-year of a free Everything Plan. They basically subtracted the cost of the one-year plan and the known cost of the Touchstone ($70) from the total worth of the prize. That price would be UNSUBSIDIZED.

All cellphone carriers subsidize the costs of cellphones. How else do you think you get some for free? I believe the unsubsidized price of the iPhone is $599, but you get it from AT&T with a 2-year contract for $199, no? A $599 iPhone compares perfectly to a $542 Pre given the cost of the parts.

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

Well then, I stand corrected. Nonetheless, a replacement program where I have to pay Apple $80 to replace my battery and pay to rent another phone in the meantime seems outrageous and I'm not about to purchase sodering equipment and take up sodering LOL (I'm sorry that's just plain funny) to do what should be a simple battery replacement.

And while Apple fans may constantly buy the next newest iPhones, I don't think you'll find a majority of people getting a new one every year, especially not in this economy, and especially not without the heavy subsidies generally only reserved for a 2-year contract renewal or becoming a new customer.

Listen, dudes, the iPhone is a cool phone, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the story, be-all-end-all without any flaws. There's room for improvement and from what I've seen the Pre is the improvement. Let's not forget that PALM was once the leader in this area back when Apple was still trying to cling to a vanishing slice of the computer pie. Leaders come and go and sometimes they rise from the dead.


On May 13 10:32 AM marv08 wrote:

> On May 13 01:41 AM SharonW wrote:

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

iPod?!?! Who the heck talks on an iPod? You're comparing apples to oranges.


On May 13 09:35 AM brewer wrote:

> "As for your "life integration" issues, this is exactly what I was
> talking about with sychronicity. YES, it will draw from all of your
> various sources as I listed above and integrate them, please see
> my other posts if you haven't. No other cell phone does this. Contact
> information, calendars, you name it. If you have multiple email contacts
> for one person, you'll find them all under their name. It will pull
> everything from your computer or the net."
>
> Uh, the iPod does a far better job of this than the pre will. Have
> you never used an iPhone, or what?
>
> It's simple to change the iPhone or iPod battery. I have done it
> myself on older iPods. Your watch has a non-replaceable battery as
> well. But you go to the store and they change it, right?
>
> The battery can be changed, there is just no door to fall off as
> there is on the pre. You just have to not be all thumbs to change
> the iPhone battery. Most people don't do the simplest things for
> themselves, like change the oil in their cars. iPhone is for this
> majority. Have it done at the Apple store ($59) if you can't manage
> changing your own battery and if you actually have the device long
> enough to need a new battery. It lasts for years, and by that time
> most people want to upgrade to the next model anyway. It's a throwaway
> culture, but you can still change your own iPhone battery if you
> are any good with your hands, etc...
>
>

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

> Battery life? Switchable battery is good. I with iPhone has it. On
> the other hand, our iPhones work just fine all day, no complaints.
> My children have theirs and no complaints. May be heavy users care
> a lot more than normal users? What percentage are heavy vs normal
> users?

Switchable? No I said replaceable. It's been my understanding that you can't replace the iPhone battery. Has that changed? When your battery completely dies, i.e. will no longer charge, so goes your iPhone from what I've read.

And, in actuality, I have no iPhone biases. I would have loved one if they had launched on Sprint. I hate both Verizon and AT&T corporate cultures as they relate to their cell phone users, and AT&T 3G, once again, really does suck by comparison. Perhaps you should try such a comparison. But I do keep up on as much news for the competition as I do for the investment. It really doesn't sound like anything earth-shattering is forthcoming for iPhone 3.0.

P.S. I don't think they're marketing this as a kid's phone although I'm sure kids would enjoy it just as much if not more than the iPhone, except for the possible cool, trendy factor of Apple. I think this is what the author was referring to with regards to the Paris Hilton reference. But kids are very into multi-tasking and would easily enjoy pulling and integrating contacts from Facebook with their Twitter and their Gmail contacts or whatever. Then again, it might just become the new cool, and the iPhone yesterday's news.


On May 12 09:50 PM SiliconValleyJoe wrote:

> Actually, cut-and-paste finally arrives in 3.0.
>
> Landscape virtual KB is for all applications. Some like it, some
> do not. It sells millions, so many must be able to live with it.
> My children can :-).
>
> Multi-tasking? A focus that is overblown. For an investor, if you
> focus only on multi-tasking, then you are risking a lot. Best learn
> what multi-tasking is and why it may not be as big a deal as you
> think.
>
> Battery life? Switchable battery is good. I with iPhone has it. On
> the other hand, our iPhones work just fine all day, no complaints.
> My children have theirs and no complaints. May be heavy users care
> a lot more than normal users? What percentage are heavy vs normal
> users?
>
> Nothing inspiring about iPhone 3.0? Sounds like you are letting personal
> bias taint your investor's "objectivity"? I use Mac's at home, PC's
> at work and I own AAPL and MSFT and RIM and ...... Investing is about
> using money to make money, personal emotional bias has no room in
> it. Emotion just cloud your thinking process, skew your decisions
> and could at times lead to losses.
>
> Good luck!
>
>

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

"Until someone can talk about the SDK and what developers can and cannot do on the Pre, we can say nothing about what sort of users will find Pre useful. Is Pre targeting management and integration of "life data" such as meetings, contacts, appointments, emails, voice mails and so on? Like the earlier Palm product? Is Pre into sophisticated games? business applications? Video editing? What?

As for "multi-tasking", it is a silly focus. Given Pre is a handheld device likely with limited RAM and favors lightweight threading models, can I write a resource-intensive application? How will my application impact other applications if I force intensive page-swapping? What is the point of multi-tasking if one poorly-behaving application slows down all other applications? Do we all know WHAT sort of "multi-tasking" we are talking about yet?"

Wow! So many questions, so little time. I know the product. I don't invest in something without reading just about everything associated with it. Like I said I don't invest on Bono whims regardless of who you addressing this post to, I'd like to answer.

Regarding your music question, the Pre will ship with the Pandora app for starters. However, Amazon for MP3 is, of course, available and not as constrained as iTunes. Heck, every MP3 on your computer is available to the Pre as well.

As for your "life integration" issues, this is exactly what I was talking about with sychronicity. YES, it will draw from all of your various sources as I listed above and integrate them, please see my other posts if you haven't. No other cell phone does this. Contact information, calendars, you name it. If you have multiple email contacts for one person, you'll find them all under their name. It will pull everything from your computer or the net.

As for the importance of multi-tasking, perhaps you should see a demonstration. Click Meet the Pre:

www.palm.com/us/produc.../

That's pretty much functioning like a computer where you have several windows open and your IM and email at the same time, but with everything completely integrated. Moreover, when you get a notification of an incoming email you don't have to exit whatever you're doing to read it, etc.

The "card" system employed by Palm to handle multiple tasks has shown it to do so with aplomb. Because of the structure behind it, nothing has proven to intensive to suck life out of other apps or crash the phone. In fact, app developers appear to be in love with the simple and standard Web development tools such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML that run on a version of the Webkit engine.

Here:
Developers: Palm's webOS Is The Bomb

www.informationweek.co...;jsessionid=31WSI0NGHH...

In addition, it will do Adobe pdfs, Flash will be coming later this year, Docs to Go, Office 2007.

So check out some of the resources I've offered and see for yourself. It's really not hard to get information on this phone. A simple Google News search for Palm Pre will answer every question.



On May 12 09:14 PM SiliconValleyJoe wrote:

> It is easy to confuse business vs. technical details vs. end user
> experience.
>
> A user does not care about technical details. A user wants a phone
> that works 100% of the time, is clearly audible, has at least a full
> day's worth of battery charge for all that one wants to do and the
> device is capable of doing everything one wants to do such as playing
> games, listening to music, browse the web, use certain apps, take
> a few pictures or video and send a few MMS messages. A device that
> can do all these will certainly sell itself. So is anyone here saying
> that Pre overshadows the Berries and iPhone in all these areas, in
> every way? I doubt it. Pre is a solid offering with some nice features
> but that is it.
>
> Technically speaking, WebOS is no different than other UN*X-flavor
> OS. Palm did not run off to build a brand new OS from scratch. So
> toss the technically "superior" claim out the window. The real difference
> will be in how the WebOS performs its tasks and the Pre SDK. Until
> someone can say something about the WebOS architecture, performance
> characteristics and hardware requirements, all the back and forth
> about "multi-tasking" is foolish. All UN*X-flavor OS already does
> multi-tasking, and that capability dates back to the 70's. Until
> someone can talk about the SDK and what developers can and cannot
> do on the Pre, we can say nothing about what sort of users will find
> Pre useful. Is Pre targeting management and integration of "life
> data" such as meetings, contacts, appointments, emails, voice mails
> and so on? Like the earlier Palm product? Is Pre into sophisticated
> games? business applications? Video editing? What?
>
> As for "multi-tasking", it is a silly focus. Given Pre is a handheld
> device likely with limited RAM and favors lightweight threading models,
> can I write a resource-intensive application? How will my application
> impact other applications if I force intensive page-swapping? What
> is the point of multi-tasking if one poorly-behaving application
> slows down all other applications? Do we all know WHAT sort of "multi-tasking"
> we are talking about yet?
>
> Business wise, if all the doom and gloom is somewhat true of Palm
> then Palm is almost like a new but publicly traded Silicon Valley
> "start-up". Palm's VC-like investors probably has some sort of trigger.
> If Pre sells X-number of units within a certain amount of time, even
> without significant profit, these investors may consider putting
> in more case to keep the ball rolling because they can smell a profit
> looming. If Pre is slightly below investor (not public) expectation,
> may be there will be some hard negotiation for more shares, for more
> investors to buy in or for some changes before they sink in more
> cash. If Pre sales fall in the "red" zone, the investors may panic
> and start looking for merger propositions. This is where Palm seems
> to be at. So Pre has to sell like hot cakes right off the bat. There
> is NOTHING like a hot-selling product to put a big smile on the faces
> of VC's.
>
> As for public investors, you best know what to expect. Unlike those
> "VC's" who meet with the board (or sit on them) and the CEO, the
> VP, the architects and program managers, you have no insider information.
> Your Palm stock is subject to market turbulence. The market is very
> ignorant of these nitty gritty details. You may see share price sink
> like a rock because media reports that Pre is not selling well while
> internally, the VC's are quite happy with the sales. You may see
> share price rocket upward because of media rumor about new Pre-mini
> or Pre selling 10 million units or iPhone is dead while internally,
> everyone is worried.
>
> So before you sink money into Palm at this stage, be sure you really
> understand the technology, the product plan and the market in which
> Palm wants to play. It is folly to just focus on multi-tasking as
> a panacea or as an ultimate "weapon".
>
> Good luck to you all!
>
>
>
>
>

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

Yeah, right, Ayuh. I don't base my investments on Bono whims, but facts. It's a known fact that AT&T's network sucks nickels. AT&T just gave the boot to using the Slingbox app on their 3G (Wifi hotspots only) while other phones on other networks have no problem running it. Bandwidth issues, hmmm?

It's also a well-known fact that the iPhone won't multitask due to power issues for its non-replaceable battery. (Oh, and speaking of which, another Pre plus...a replaceable battery). And, BTW, if iPhone 3.0 rumors are true, there's nothing particularly new and inspiring coming out from them in June. Just a yawning reiteration of the old iPhone with a tad more power and compass living on the same, sleepy, barely 3G network. Gee, maybe you'll even get a landscape virtual keyboard that's equally slow to use. Think they'll finally get that cut-and-paste thingie down yet?

Honey, I don't need no stinkin' stops. :D