After Palm reported to Wall Street that sales performance of their new webOS-based smartphones was far below original expectations, CEO Jon Rubinstein sent an email to all Palm employees explaining in more detail the reasons for their disappointing financial results and the steps the company is taking to right the ship. Below is the text of the actual memo as posted by the Wall Street Journal:

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 has bet it all on the success of webOS and their Palm Pre and Pixi, recently adding Verizon and, hopefully soon, AT&T. Sales on both Sprint and Verizon networks has been disappointing and they will be competing with the likes of the iPhone on AT&T’s network, so hopefully they can pull a rabbit out of their hat and once again become a major player in an already crowded field of smartphones. Do you think Rubinstein’s email inspires confidence?

source: WSJ

It’s unclear if Palm’s recent announcement about lowering its fiscal year 2010 guidance had a play in Sprint lowering the price of the Palm Pixi to $49.99. Since its release with the number three wireless provider, the Palm Pixi stayed in the $99.99 price boat for a while – it was considered by many to be too high and would not garner the attention it needed at that level. When Verizon came along and introduced the Palm Pixi Plus to their webOS starved customers, they managed to offer their version at the same price – but it housed a bit more features to justify a better purchase decision than Sprint’s version. Maybe this might be an attempt to really get people to take notice now – it should’ve probably been like that from the beginning. Some argued that the original $99.99 price of the Pixi really made customers consider to upgrade to the Palm Pre which was priced at $149.99. For all we know, this move by Sprint could spell some other ominous feeling that lurks behind the walls over at Palm – or maybe it could reinvigorate sales that could potentially lead to some serious profit.
source: Sprint via PalmInfocenter

Things have definitely been rocky over at Palm where they witnessed some extreme lows to only experience the fruits of their success again and finally brought straight back to reality in the course of a year. With that said, Palm has gone ahead and updated its guidance for its fiscal year 2010 revenues that is expected to be “well below” the forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. They now anticipate third quarter revenues to come in somewhere between $285 million and $310 million on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and between $300 million to $320 million on a non-GAAP basis. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said, “Palm webOS is recognized as a groundbreaking platform that enables one of the best smartphone experiences available today, and our work to evolve the platform and bring industry-leading technology to market continues. However, driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated.” Palm expects to announce its official third quarter earning on March 18, 2010. Six months ago when the Palm Pre was still garnering a lot of attention, it was unfathomable to see Palm almost back to its original situation before the unveiling of webOS. They’ve managed to dodge a lot of stuff in the past, but fierce competition in the market may force them to look elsewhere to survive in this cut throat industry.
source: Business Wire via Mobileburn

The big day is finally here for Palm owners waiting to get their taste of webOS 1.4, but it’s still unheard of any webOS owners seeing the light of it. Although the rumor pointed to today as being the release of webOS 1.4, it looks like the changelog for it has been leaked – we hope. The latest update to Palm’s platform hosts a myriad of fixes that’ll put an end to some annoying bugs that plague some handsets. The biggest thing to come out of it is the capability of capturing video – easily something that might have prevented some people from choosing it as their handset of choice. There are also numerous features to expect such as an improved universal search which includes outlook Exchange and corporate address look up. Palm Pre owners should pay extra attention because there’s one exciting feature that’ll affect you the most – webOS 1.4 will add support for Adobe Flash 10 Beta. So far it sounds like no one has been able to get their hands on the update, but we’d suggest to keep on checking every now and then because you never know when Palm will give it the green light.
source: PreCentral

At first you may have waited for the Palm Pre and Pixi to be available on Verizon before you pulled the trigger. Then, maybe you decided to wait a little longer in hopes of a price drop. If you have had the patience of Job, then you may want to head over to Best Buy for a pretty good deal on Verizon’s two new webOS-based handsets.

After instant rebates and a 2-year contract with Verizon, you can now pick up the Palm Pre Plus for only $99.99 or the Pixi Plus for the low, low price of free. If that’s the deal you’ve been waiting for, then Best Buy is the place to get it. This offer is likely for a limited time so it’s time to jump off the fence! Will it be a Pre Plus or a Pixi Plus for you?

source: mypre

WebOS owners will soon have yet another online music service app that’s heading their way – Grooveshark announced today the launch of a native app for webOS. For those not too familiar, Grooveshark is an online music service that allows users to access its vast on-demand song catalog; similar to other live streaming services out there. Not considered a small fish in the pond, Grooveshark host a numbers of tracks that runs well into the millions – at the same time, it offers a personal playlist and favorites for its base of users. It’ll be some time before the actual app is made available through the App Catalog, but Palm Pre and Pixi owners should expect to see it “very soon” according to the startup. Their latest offering for webOS owners supplements their existing support for apps catered for Android and BlackBerry smartphones. Although they’ve completed their work on an iPhone app since back in July 2009, its appearance on the App Store is still nowhere in sight – let’s hope that the same fate doesn’t play out with the webOS version.
via MobileCrunch

According to Gartner and their newly-released report of annual worldwide smartphone sales, webOS handsets (Palm) own less than 1% of total market share and face a long uphill road to expand that market share. When compared to Goliaths like Symbian, Research In Motion and the iPhone, the webOS platform lags far behind, even lagging behind the new up-and-coming Android OS.

Even though webOS hardly registers a statistical ripple in the highly-competitive global smartphone ocean, there are still plenty of bright spots to look forward to as webOS handsets become more widely available on other carriers and as the number of apps grow. Although it has modest beginnings, webOS may be poised to make a bigger splash in the months ahead.

source: engadget

It only seemed like yesterday when Palm unveiled to the world it’s Palm Pre handset that featured a refreshing new platform call webOS. In the course of over a year, we’ve seen their handset launched with much anticipation and hope riding on its back – but during the same period, we’ve seen Apple strike back so quick with the iPhone 3GS and then came the wave after wave of top notch Android handsets. Lost in all of it, almost losing some of its luster during the process, Palm is still trying to move forward as it faces an insurmountable mix of opponents that seemingly have set the bar. The latest blow to Palm comes in the form of a Bank of America/Merril Lynch analyst, Vivek Arya, cutting his rating on Palm to Underperform from Buy – slashing his target price of $20 to all the way down to $10. He states in a research note that “Palm’s superior platform features have not translated into sufficient carrier support and consumer demand, and we are concerned the window of opportunity may be closing as Google’s Android ecosystem gains ground, Research In Motion revitalizes its portfolio, iPhone increases its presence, and as Microsoft reboots its efforts with Windows Phone 7.” Looking toward Q4 already, Arya expects Palm’s potential for sales growth to dramatically decrease, by as much as 20 percent, when Microsoft plans to launch their latest Windows Phone 7 Series platform. Just 6 months ago Palm was looking to make a serious rebound with their stock performing at a 2 year high of $17.46 – now it has dropped to less than $9 today after Arya’s stance on the company. When you look even further into the numbers, Palm has not seen a profit in more than 8 quarters.
source: Barron’s via wmpoweruser

Everything on the Palm Pre Plus seemed to be better that the original one that was launched with Sprint back last summer – from the hardware under the hood to its slightly more clicky keyboard; everything looked good. Now there are some reports about some Palm Pre Plus owners having an eclectic mix of issues surrounding its QWERTY keyboard. Based on a survey gathered from PreCentral, it shows that an alarming amount of keyboard related problems occurring on the Palm Pre – in fact, it’s mostly isolated to the one being offered by Verizon. Palm definitely made some tweaks to it after probably hearing all the feedback surrounding the original one launched by Sprint. Some of the problems include letters being entered twice, some letter not being entered, and some input lag when typing. The survey found that 23 percent of respondents indicated “No typing problems” while a staggering 42 percent are experiencing problems related to all three of the issues we’ve noted above already. Even though there are owners that are having these technical difficulties, Palm hasn’t announced anything regarding the matter – so it’s anyone’s guess if it’s deemed as a defect or not.
source: PreCentral via everythingpre

The speculated date for the release of webOS 1.4 has come and gone – still leaving Palm webOS owners feeling a tad bit jittery waiting for its availability. Luckily they won’t have to worry too much because Palm has promised to release it before the end of the month rolls along. One of PreCentral’s Verizon tipsters has informed them that a “hard date” roll out for the update is scheduled to commence on February 25 – meaning that some 100,000 devices will see it go live on their handsets first and then slowly trickle to more later. It follows a similar path from what we’ve seen in the past with some of Verizon’s Android updates, however, it’s unclear as to whether or not it’ll be available to anyone that checks for the update on that date. WebOS users have a lot to look forward to in this latest upgrade because it’s expected to finally make video recording a possibility, compatibility with Flash 10.1, an alternative process to launching a card, and some minor speed improvements. Even though there’s still some waiting to be done, it’s nice to see that Palm is still getting their platform up to speed with their rivals.
source: PreCentral