Sramana's  Instablog

The Palm Pre was released on June 6, and the verdict is that it delivers on many fronts and can be strong competition for the iPhone if it is able to fix its app store and attract third-party developers. Analysts are calling the launch a success. Let’s take a closer look at the phone’s features and how it fares against competitors.

n a major uplift to the fortunes of TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO), the pioneer in digital video recorders (DVRs) with annual revenue of $249.67 million, a U.S. district court in East Texas granted them an award of $103 million against Echostar, Dish Network’s sister company. This award goes a long way in helping TiVo, which recently reported a loss in its recently reported first quarter. Let us take a closer look.

Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), a provider of the health industry’s billing and practice management solutions for helping physicians collect their reimbursements, saw significant growth over the year, but failed to meet the market’s expectations of their Q1 results.

Our SaaS coverage continues. We’ve seen acquisitions starting with Intuit buying PayCycle. Let’s see what’s up with Salesforce.com, and what is SAP likely to acquire with its rather large warchest.

On May 21, Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM), a pioneer in the SaaS sector with annual revenue of $1.077 billion, reported its first quarter results that beat analyst expectations.

After having had a depressing run in the past quarters, Blue Nile (NASDAQ:NILE), a leading jewelry retailer with annual revenue of $295.3 million, seems to be back on track. While economic conditions have not improved drastically, the company’s performance is definitely upbeat.

After quarters of stellar growth, SunPower (NADSAQ:SPWRA) too seems to have been hit by the economic meltdown, and its earlier confidence in meeting projected numbers has wavered. In the recently announced Q1 results, revenues of $214 million fell by 22% over the year and came in far short of the market’s expected $269 million. EPS of $0.05 was also significantly short of the Street’s expected $0.24.