In a way, Walmart’s recent price chop to its Verizon Wireless Palm smartphones really highlights the battle handset manufacturers have to endure in order to stay afloat. Almost 9 months ago when Sprint launched the Palm Pre to an awaiting audience eager to test drive Palm’s WebOS platform, the long time smartphone maker has seen its highs and lows. Walmart is now giving away two of the latest Palm devices, the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, at the ridiculously low prices of $29.99 and free respectively with your signature on a contract. Yeah, just about anyone can get their hands on a decent smartphone without having to fork over a penny, but Palm’s fate is hanging in the balance as it tries to turn things around. It wasn’t too long ago when a just released $99 smartphone was considered a bargain, which of course is where the Palm Centro placed itself, but now the notion of free smartphones feels like a surreal thing. Although the Palm Pre Plus will still require you to fork out some cash, it could very well meet the same fate bestowed upon the Pixi Plus in due time.
source: Walmart via Mobileburn

In the US, Sprint Palm Pre owners are getting the first taste of the latest version of the platform while the O2 and Movistar variants are also getting in on this treatment. The download itself is at a mere 39MB and will be all that stands in between your way from getting video recording, Flash, enhanced message notifications, and improved battery life that’s all found on webOS 1.4. Everyone else will have to eye these owners with envy as they will become the first to test out these new features. As they prepare to launch the update on other carriers and handsets, it’ll be a test to see how quickly Palm can expedite the roll out of their next installment of the platform as things have begun to look shaky for the company. They’ll need to really capture the attention of consumers if and when they release the next version in order to compete in this ever fierce market.
via Engadget

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

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

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

It was a bit of a shocker, as we reported, when Verizon came out of the chute with the Palm Pre Plus marketing the phone to Mom. Yeah, Valentine’s Day was approaching and all, but the ads were so soft and-for lack of a better phrase-feminine, especially when contrasted with the Rock and Roll, in your face, loud macho spots for the Motorola DROID. And sure, women use smartphones too. But it seemed as though Big Red had not really studied what happened with some of the Palm Pre spots that Sprint ran. If you recall, those ads were so avant garde that they made no sense and never focused on the webOS operating system that many felt was the main selling point of the phone. And if screwing up the ad campaign for the Pre wasn’t enough for Sprint, they practically repeated the experience when the Pixi was launched.

Whether it was the (lack of) sales numbers or the marketing department just coming to its senses, Verizon has changed the spots to concentrate on the handset’s styling, software and of course, the Verizon 3G network. With this spot, Big Red talks about the features that would appeal to everyone. The styling appeals to all, the Notification page shows a text in progress that would appeal to the teens and young adults and talk of a syncing calendar showing events like Timmy’s guitar lesson and baseball game is aimed at the parents. Verizon has apparently learned what Sprint did not pick up on and that is that the content of a television ad campaign is important when selling smartphones and no matter how many consultants tell you otherwise, an ad that just shows someone’s head spewing forth rambling comments does not really tell much about a phone.

Note that Verizon’s BOGO deal is supposed to change today from what you see at the end of this spot. Check our earlier story here.
source: YouTube via precentral

After hearing about some disappointing sales news from an analyst about Verizon Palm Pre and Pixi units, one would think that it could have an ominous repercussion with the future of Palm. Add in the news regarding a potential takeover bid that could see the smartphone maker on the fence; it leaves very little to be optimistic about their future. The latest round of news is somewhat of a departure and is a bit soothing after all the commotion it was able to stir up. Research firm OTR Global really had people wondering about the future after a report claimed that Palm ordered all Pre and Pixi production were to cease – potentially jump starting the end for Palm. Fortunately though, someone jumped the gun and didn’t pay close attention to the calendar or verified with Palm. The team over at Engadget was able to clear things up a lot amidst an aura of confusion about the report – it seems like Palm ordered the halt for the Chinese New Year that’s happening on the 14th; with production to go live again at the end of the month. Although Verizon Palm sales may not be where it should when compared to Sprint’s launch, Palm is ramping up production early in the year to cover the downtime that’s expected to happen – the availability of handsets won’t be affected.
source: Engadget

It was about a month ago when news about webOS 1.4 started surfacing and brought some delight to owners – it pointed to a possibility of seeing Flash support on the platform. Although Flash may be on hold for webOS 1.4, the latest update may be expected to launch on February 15 – based on an email that was posted by a PreCentral forum member. Both Palm Pre and Pixi owners can look forward to seeing video capture, assorted calendar enhancements, improved phonebook transfers, and messaging enhancements in this latest update. The biggest feature owners are probably looking forward to is the ability to record video of course – something that most people agreed should have been offered since its launch. Nonetheless it’s finally here and should be expected as long as the rumors hold true and could potentially be moved up depending on the carrier.
source: PreCentral

With commercials up and running for Palm’s handsets for Verizon, it looks like it hasn’t been able to spur up some impressive sales so far. Launching the phones on the nation’s number one wireless provider would’ve brought sales up to the positive, but according to Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley, he is “slightly disappointed” with the outcome of the movement. On the flip side though, he contends that a more aggressive media campaign from Big Red and Palm should stir up some demand for the handsets. Just watching the commercials so far, one can gather that Palm’s devices are only targeting a specific demographic as opposed to attacking a mix of categories. Walkley states that the company is on track to meet his forecast goal of 1 million webOS phones in the February quarter. In order to hit his 1.5 million unit goal for the May quarter, Walkley says it will require “ramping sell-through trends at Verizon.” Maybe we’ll start seeing a different side to future commercials which will hopefully make it attractive enough to get consumers to start jumping aboard the webOS train.
via Barron’s

After seeing a brief appearance during CES, Slacker Radio is hitting up the airwaves on WebOS handsets – it even managed to sneak its way onto the latest Verizon Palm Pre Plus commercials. It’s finally being made available for download in the App Catalog – providing the platform a much needed name to its growing lineup of apps. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Slacker is an online radio station player that enables music lovers to find content that suits them best. There’s even the option to upgrade to Slacker plus, with a monthly fee of course, that can get you additional bonus features like creating lists out of specific song, lyrics, and ad-free listening. So maybe instead of relying on using up the precious storage space on your handset, you can always switch on to Slacker Radio and enjoy all your favorite music – plus we’re confident there’s a good mixing of artists and genres that’ll fit to your liking.
via PreCentral