Holiday Gift Guide »

Palm loses $22 million, sees some positive signs

Categories: AT&T, Palm, Sprint, Verizon, webOS
By: , IntoMobile
Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 2:53 PM

Palm’s took another pounding in its third-quarter earnings because consumers continue to turn away from webOS devices.

The company reported a $22 million loss on revenues of about $366 million. The loss is not unexpected because the smartphone maker lowered its revenue expectations last month because of slower-than-expected webOS sales. Unveiled in January 2009, webOS was supposed to be the catalyst for Palm’s return to respectability and profitability. I love the platform and think it proved Palm still has great visions for the industry, but the mass markets didn’t agree. The company shipped 960,000 smartphones in the quarter, which was a 23% increase from the previous quarter. Of course, “shipped” doesn’t mean sold, as only 408,000 Palm smartphones were purchased by customers. By comparison, Apple sold about 8.7 million iPhones during its last quarter. While no one is expecting webOS to have iPhone numbers, the difference is staggering and shows how far behind Palm is.

“Our recent under-performance has been very disappointing, but the potential for Palm remains strong,” said Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s CEO, in a prepared statement. “The work we’re doing to improve sales is having an impact, we’re making great progress on future products, and we’re looking forward to upcoming launches with new carrier partners. Most importantly, we have built a unique and highly differentiated platform in webOS which will provide us with a considerable – and growing – advantage as we move forward.”

The company is hitting the streets (and Verizon stores) with its Project JumpStart, and this could help goose sales. The Pre is also expected to come to AT&T – although those plans may be delayed – and that will expand its customer base. I still think it’s going to be tough to convince iPhone owners or potential iPhone owners to choose the Pre over Apple’s handset, so Palm has a tough row to hoe. Let’s hope Palm still has something up its sleeve: how badly would you want a large AMOLED webOS device with a boatload of storage and a 1GHz processor?

[Via Palm]

SPONSORED MESSAGE
Get free domestic and international calls and texts to anyone with the Vonage Mobile app available as an iPhone calling app or Android calling app.

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.

  • kilari

    Large screened webos would be sweet. But it would still need an exposed physical keyboard. I love my Pixi cus of it’s exposed keyboard. Where I look at my wifes Pre with the keyboard always a slide away and it seems a little inconvienient. Although that’s really if I was asked to be picky and really hit it with a fine toothed comb. Overall WebOS is the best. Stupid Apple I hope it dies in a fire.

  • Marin Perez

    Don’t quite agree about the fire part, but I do think that webOS is incredible. I know Palm won’t go away from a hard keyboard but I would love to see a full touch slate webOS device. Let’s see an onscreen keyboard and let’s get on with the firmware upgrades – It’s almost been a year and we’re only on 1.4.