After a mysterious halting of manufacturing three weeks ago in China, Palm has confirmed its factories are back to making Pre and Pixi devices.
The company officially said it was shutting down production last month because of Chinese New Year. This was a bit curious because instead of the traditional week off, Palm’s plants shut down for the rest of February. Then, Palm released an updated revenue guidance saying it wouldn’t reach its forecasted numbers due to sluggish sales of webOS devices. If you put all these events together,you could start to imagine a horrible future for the one-time smartphone king.
Palm’s back to producing handsets but the news came out in a weird way: through an employee’s personal blog. Lynn Fox, the company’s VP of corporate communications, said “We started the line back up at the end of February.” Fox said the company didn’t make a formal announcement because it generally doesn’t announce those things.
It would be a nightmare if every company announced every start and stop of their manufacturing plants but I think Palm had an obligation to talk about this because it confirmed the stoppage. This company is getting hammered in the stock market and any small bit of good news could help shareholders.
It’s weird to think that it was just a year ago when we thought Palm had a chance to come back. I personally love webOS because it’s an incredibly elegant and well-thought platform, but it’s clear the masses don’t feel the same way. I continue to hold out hope that Palm will shock the world at this month’s CTIA and bring out a rocking handset with an AMOLED screen, 1GHz processor and a ton of internal storage. Unfortunately, we’ll probably just see an announcement that the Pre is coming to AT&T and that’s not enough to turn around the company.
[Via CNBC]