Palm cuts forecast on Treo delay
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Palm Inc.  cut its  second-quarter profit and revenue forecasts on Monday, blaming  a delay in shipping its new Treo 750 smartphone in the United  States.
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That's what the inventor of the Treo and Palm Pilot says about the Palm Foleo. He has a tough selling job ahead.
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Palm joined Verizon Wireless in announcing on Monday the availability of the Treo 755p smartphone through that carrier. While not the breakthrough product that some had been hoping for, the 755p refreshes the Treo line for Verizon.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm Inc. began taking orders for its Treo 680 smartphone on Wednesday, hoping to expand from its core business customers to a larger market of casual, first-time users. Palm is charging US$399 for the "unlocked" version of the phone, allowing users to subscribe to any carrier, and plans to begin shipping the phones shortly after Dec. 1. One carrier has already announced a plan for the phone -- Cingular Wireless LLC will begin selling the Treo 680 for $199 on Friday. Palm hopes to attract a new demographic by designing the Treo 680 with an internal antenna, making it slimmer than previous models, and offering it in four colors, according to a statement by John Hartnett, Palm's senior vice president of global markets. In another bid for those casual customers, Palm has moved beyond purely business functions, and will offer entertainment applications like the ability to show Flash-based movies such as those seen on the YouTube Web site, and to play MP3 songs through a 30-day trial of Yahoo Inc.'s mobile, digital music service. New users might also appreciate the Google Maps function, which offers personalized driving directions or addresses for nearby restaurants. "Location-based services hold great promise in a wide variety of areas, such as helping friends find each other, helping advertisers more effectively target prospects, and even ensuring that no man ever has to stop for directions again," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices with Current Analysis. As a phone, the Palm OS-based device operates on the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks. Palm hopes the Treo 680 will help it to grow beyond its roots in the slow-growing PDA (personal digital assistant) market, and claim a greater share of the burgeoning smartphone industry. Smartphone shipments worldwide grew 75.5 percent to 34.7 million units in the first half of 2006, according to research firm Gartner Inc. In comparison, PDA sales grew only 5.7 percent to 7.4 million units. North America is the only region where PDAs continue to outsell smartphones, so Palm hopes its new product has arrived in U.S. markets in time to catch a wave of people upgrading to the new technology. With only 5 percent of the worldwide market for combined PDA and smartphone markets, Palm needs the Treo 680 to be a financial success in order to compete with its larger rivals. Nokia Corp. is the largest vendor, with 42 percent market share, followed by Research in Motion Ltd. with 6.5 percent and Motorola Inc. with 5.3 percent, according to Gartner. Posting strong sales through the holiday season will be crucial for that plan, as Gartner predicts smartphones sales will continue to rise, totaling 81 million for the full year of 2006. That growth will be fueled by a jump in consumer demand, focused on individual details like fashion and multimedia, according to a statement by Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza. Â
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Earlier today, Engadget broke the story that PalmONE might be looking at possibly making a Windows-based Treo. Not dumping the PalmSource Treo&#39;s that run PalmOS, merely adding to the line.
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Taking pre-orders Palm has begun taking orders from Europeans for its upcoming Treo 680 Palm OS-based smart phone. The updated stubless and RoHS-compliant version of the Treo 650 will retail for Â£329 inc VAT if you want one unallied to any specific mobile phone network.â¦
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Smartphone maker Palm is reportedly consulting with investment bankers about a sale, investment, or other move.
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Motorola Inc  on Wednesday  forecast a loss for the current quarter, saying a recovery in  its mobile devices business would take longer than expected.
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Motorola is realigning its business after slashing its cell-phone sales forecast. The news comes days before its
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(InfoWorld) - Recent reports that Nokia is in talks to buy Palm surprise some analysts, who nonetheless said some type of buyout might make sense and could even be a good thing for customers. According to news reports, the pioneering handset maker has been talking with possible suitors, and Nokia has emerged as the frontrunner for an acquisition, though investors might simply take the company private. Earlier reports said Motorola wanted to buy Palm. Palm is profitable and increasing sales but faces tough competition and has stumbled recently. It has sold fewer devices than analysts expected in recent quarters, in part because of delays in getting products out, said Casey Ryan of Nollenberger Capital Partners in San Francisco. New products from Research In Motion and other rivals have also eaten into Palm's market share, Ryan said. The whole high-end phone category is drawing many new entrants with flashy devices, including Apple with its iPhone. Palm was instrumental in creating the market for PDAsÂ in the 1990s but has moved with the rest of the handheld business to devices that can also be used as phones. Its Treo smartphones, which come with either the Palm OS or the MicrosoftÂ Windows Mobile platform, are now Palm's bread and butter. A Palm purchase by Nokia would mark a sharp turn for the Finnish cell-phone giant, analysts said. Nokia is focused on the OS developed by Symbian, of which it is a major owner, and its own operating systems, Needham's Ryan said. Although it has had trouble selling its high-end phones in some areas outside Europe, such as the U.S., Nokia has always insisted its operating systems were better than the competition's. Bringing the Palm and Microsoft platforms into its lineup would be like Apple's chief Steve Jobs unveiling a Windows PC, he said. "To me, it would seem to be a very challenging press conference," Ryan said. Even if Nokia swallowed hard and admitted it needed Palm OS and Windows Mobile, the company would be faced with steep hurdles in corporate integration, he added. A private buyout would make more sense, the analysts said. Palm is a basically sound company in a growing industry and could appreciate strongly over the next few years, according to Ryan. A reported price of $20 per share seems reasonable, he said. On Thursday, Palm's shares (PALM) closed at $16.49, down $0.06. Private investors could turn out to be heroes to Palm OS users, according to Greengart. They could shield Palm from the harsh glare of quarterly earnings expectations, possibly freeing management to make the big investment required to bring Palm OS up to date, he added. Despite several changes in direction and ownership over the past few years, the software has remained largely the same except for the addition of video capability, he said.
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Profits continue to drop despite strong sales of Palm's Treo smartphone.
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Palmone Inc. this week will unveil the Treo 650 smart phone, although the phone likely will not be available from carriers until later this fall.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm denied a recent industry report that its new Foleo mini-notebook would be delayed and said the device was still on target to launch in the U.S. "this summer," or by the end of the third quarter. The company was responding to a report suggesting that bugs in Foleo's software will delay the launch of the device from the end of August to as late as early October. The software bugs are preventing Foleo from correctly synchronizing data with Palm's Treo smartphone, according to a report posted Wednesday on Barron's Tech Trader Daily blog. The report was based on an earlier research note by a Deutsche Bank analyst. Palm unveiled Foleo in May, calling it a 2.5-pound "smartphone companion." The device will initially only be able to sync up with Palm's own Treo smartphones. Foleo allows users to read their office documents more easily on its 10-inch display than on a cramped smartphone screen and type e-mail messages more easily on its full keyboard than on a thumb-operated keypad. Palm insisted on Friday that it was still on track to meet its original shipping schedule for Foleo. "As stated on May 30, U.S. availability for the Palm Foleo mobile companion will begin this summer. We will let you know if this changes," said Jim Christensen, Palm's director of communications. Regardless of when Palm begins to sell the Foleo, any delays to the new product will not have a major impact on company earnings, one analyst said. "This is a minor glitch. If they're a year late, it's a problem, but if they're a couple months late, it's not going to make any difference -- all their money's in the Treos," said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates. "I'd be more concerned if their new phones were late; then we'd be talking about tens of millions of dollars. But at best it's [Foleo's] going to be a slow burn for them; this thing's not going to take off," said Gold. Even strong sales of its Treo smartphone may not be enough for Palm. On June 28, the company reported a profit of $15.4 million for the fourth quarter,Â a 44 percent drop from its profit a year earlier. In recent years, Palm has been shifting its product portfolio away from PDAs, a market it pioneered, and towards smartphones, which offer potentially much greater profit margins because of their higher price tags. The Foleo represents another step toward larger, more expensive products. But industry skeptics are dubious about its prospects, saying that smartphone owners may be hesitant to carry a second device in their pockets or to pay $499 for Foleo to make existing features easier to use.
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World&#39;s top maker of chips used in cell phones lowers sales target but raises earnings guidance. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Texas Instruments cut its sales forecast for the third quarter Tuesday but raised its
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Palm Inc , the maker of  Treo cell phones, forecast lower-than-expected revenue amid  tough competition from Research in Motion Ltd's   Blackberry and Apple Inc's  iPhone, sending its shares  tumbling 12 percent on Tuesday.
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New Windows Mobile alternative Apple's iPhone is going to hit Palm hard, a US analyst has forecast. Research in Motion's consumer-friendly BlackBerry Curve will harm the PDA pioneer too, Piper Jaffray wireless hardware analyst T Michael Walkley claimed this week.â¦
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Details of Palm Inc.'s new smart phone are emerging ahead of the product's launch tomorrow.