Well, folks, it happened.  Palm has put themselves up for sale, as reported by Shaun at PDA-247 and just about everyone else with an eye on the company.  So, with Palm and WebOS being what it is, what should a company buy it for:

- It’s patents and intellectual property, that could be used by some already established phone makers, to further their own portfolio?

OR

- To continue with the development of WebOS and phones running it?

I’m afraid I can’t weigh in until I sleep on it… but we’d love to hear your thoughts on this!  Hit the comments and let us know what you think.

Palm Pre, Running WebOS

Palm, the Godfather of mobile computing, has all the right cards.  Palm, the company, doesn’t seem to be able to do hold their hand properly, though.  Let’s look at this:

Palm was dogged by critics for years for having an aging OS.  They went behind closed doors and created WebOS.  WebOS is in many ways, the best mobile OS available to date and for the foreseeable future.  But with Palm, having the best product doesn’t always mean much.  The lion’s share eludes them.  For some reason, they don’t ever seem to be able to carry momentum.  They dropped the ball in terms of third party application development by nixing a built in Palm OS API emulation layer, effectively alienating a huge user and developer base.  They have not recovered from this.  They have once again been plagued by somewhat poor build quality.  Just as Doug and Brent here at JAMM, as both experienced issues in build.  Byte for byte, their operating system is superior to others in many ways though.  Unfortunately this doesn’t mean much with Palm, though.

Let’s go back a little further in time, back to the Palm OS years.  The Palm OS is simple.  Many people complained loudly about this, but what caused some people to whine was actually the beauty of the operating system.  The UI (which Apple borrowed a bit of, I think) was fluid.  Actions inside of programs were an extension of logic.  A calendar entry or task was as simple as pressing a button while pulling out the stylus on your way to jot down the item.  A huge third party base application was built around the operating system that allowed users to watch video, play various types of music, create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents to name a few.  Palm could have made the competition mostly irrelevant if they would have only showcased the functionality in one of these devices.  Instead, they allowed the iPod to gain ground.  They allowed Windows Mobile to overshadow it.  They started listening to all those that whined and complained the loudest.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease, doesn’t it?!

Back to present day, actually earlier this week, and we are back to the same old familiar scenario.  Palm is setting there, holding a wonderful hand of cards, wondering how to capitalize.  Just check out the internal email circulated by Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein below (as found here 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

[Image:  Palm.com]

Palm recently let it slip that there was an update to webOS on the way that would remove the pesky app storage limit. Well, today they made good on their promise with the latest webOS update for both the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi.

In addition to relaxing the app storage limit, there are many other updates that should make the Pre and Pixi better including improved battery life, an improved App Catalog experience, the ability to edit forwarded email text, and even a new way to perform a full release.

There are many more changes for both the Pre (found here) and the Pixi (found here).

How many of you have updated to webOS 1.3.5? What are your initial impressions?

(via @CRA1G)

Palm Pre

According to reports, Verizon has decided to pass on the Palm Pre.  They are siting underwhelming sales.  As a Verizon customer, all I can say is, “Are You KIDDING Me?’.  Hmmm…sales could be low due to the fact that Palm picked a smaller carrier with Sprint.  Plus, there have been lots of comments that people will get a Pre once its available on Verizon or AT&T.  Everyone I know that has tried webOS just loves it.  So, I am hoping that Verizon is JUST saying no to the Pre, and might get the Pixi or another webOS device.  If that’s not the case, then I am officially putting Verizon on notice that I am switching carriers come the end of my contract.  They have no appealing phones, as I have no interest in Windows Mobile.  I have always supported Verizon, but its time to get with the future. 

Via MobileCrunch

UPDATE - It looks like the rumors of a Pre death for Verizon has been much exaggerated.  Today two more reputable analysts have said that the Pre, or even better, an updated Pre is definitely headed for Verizon in Q1 2010.  I have breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I do hope we see the Pixi as well. 

Via IntoMobile

Sprint seems to hope so. The folks over at Precentral.net got ahold of some new documents showing upcoming prices for Sprint phones. On this list is the Palm Pre for $150. They have the HTC Hero, one of the more attractive Android devices, priced at $179. If you are on Sprint, this is starting to look like a decent deal. Of course, when the price drop goes live, you are still probably better off shopping at BestBuy or Radio The Shack since, unlike Sprint, they will give you the rebate without you having to actually mail it off.

I just returned my third Palm Pre over the weekend, and I have to say that I am not sure it is worth it quite yet. I love…absolutely LOVE the potential of webOS. Too bad the Pre is plagued by sub-par hardware. I really want Palm to succeed, but at the same time I think I would rather see them just license webOS to someone like HTC that knows how to make some quality hardware. Then maybe they can focus more on optimizing the OS to get rid of the lag and some of the other quirks.

So, in the days when you can buy a $99 iPhone 3G, what do you think about Palm selling the Pre for $249? Remember, you only get it for $149 if you are one of those people that follows through with a mail-in rebate.

[via Precentral.net]

UDPATE: Well it looks like the majority of the US are not eligible for this deal yet.  PreCentral has issued an update to this issue.  What it boils down to is that the only markets that are eligible for the $249 – $100 mail-in rebate are the IPCS markets.  To read more about this update, check out the PreCentral article here.