Palm Reports Loss as Apple’s iPhone Targets Pre
Longtime PDA manufacturer Palm lost $98 million, or 89 cents a share, in its third fiscal quarter. That’s a substantial increase from its $57 million, or 53 cents a share, loss in the same quarter last year.
“We’re proceeding through a challenging transitional period,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “However, our current results shouldn’t overshadow the tremendous progress we’ve made against our strategic goals. We’re poised to usher in a new era at Palm.”
Wall Street wasn’t particularly fazed by the earnings report. Analysts had anticipated the company would fall short of profitability, although not as severely as Colligan reported. Palm share prices were up slightly in afternoon trading.
Vague Palm Plans
Potentially more problematic is that Colligan was unable to say exactly when Palm’s corporate life raft, the eagerly awaited Pre smartphone, will float into Sprint stores. During a conference call to discuss the company’s financial results and upcoming plans, Colligan said Palm planned to “deliver this product into the hands of consumers within the next 15 weeks.”
This lack of specifics could prove problematic for a couple of reasons.
First, expectations for the new device have been high ever since it was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The anticipation has eaten into sales of Palm’s existing devices as consumers elect to wait for the new hardware. The longer it takes for the Pre to arrive, the greater the lost sales will be.
Sour Apples?
The second and perhaps greater concern is the changes Apple announced earlier this week for its iPhone operating system. Many of the features Apple is adding to version 3.0 are features that gained oohs and aahs when the Pre’s webOS was deomonstrated at CES. Each day that the Pre is not on shelves is another day closer to the media and consumer frenzy that will…
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