Palm Has Bet The Farm On Palm Pre
But Palm's $105 million loss for its fiscal fourth quarter means Palm has a lot of mountain to climb -- and fast. And if its CEO didn't come right out and say as much, it stands to reason Palm has staked its long term health and any possibility of rejuvenation squarely on Palm Pre's success.
Granted, the $105 million hit continues a streak of quarterly losses that brings the current total, for Palm, to eight. And there's plenty of optimism to glean from the fact that the loss column number was far less than many analysts predicted for Palm's quarterly earnings.
There's also the pre-Pre factor. In its fiscal fourth quarter, Palm reported sales of 351,000 smartphones, or about $86.8 million from smartphone revenue. Those numbers don't reflect Pre sales, obviously -- the Pre is three weeks old -- but they definitely reflect Pre anticipation, in that customers weren't going to plunk down cash on a Treo Pro or other dated Palm devices with the highly touted Pre waiting in the wings. Observers won't get a real flavor on whether Pre is resuscitating Palm for at least a quarter or two.
"The launch of Palm webOS and Palm Pre was a major milestone in Palm's transformation," said Jon Rubinstein, Palm's CEO, in a statement. "We have now officially reentered the race. We have more to accomplish, but the groundwork is laid for a very promising future here at Palm."
Rubinstein suggested during the company's fourth quarter earnings call that Palm and its major smartphone competitors -- behemoths like Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry, not to mention phones that run on Google's Android platform -could coexist and prosper.
"There's room for three to five players in this space," Rubinstein said during the company's earnings call. "We don't have to beat each other to prosper."
Rubinstein and Palm did not provide any sales figures on Palm Pre so far, although some analysts put the ballpark at about 150,000 since its early June launch. According to one media research company, Palm Pre's App Catalog hit the 1 million mark for downloads this past Wednesday.
Palm also confirmed late last week that its software developers kit (SDK) would be ready by the end of the summer.