Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the embattled manufacturer of the Palm “Treo email phone” (what, it’s not a smartphone anymore?). Palm is now predicting even greater losses than they had previously forecasted, based on those unforeseen warranty repairs and the delay of Verizon Wireless’s Palm Treo 755p.
The lowered forecast is blamed on ever increasing defections from the Palm Treo to BlackBerry smartphones and the Apple iPhone. And, to make the bad news even worse, it seems Palm will stop forecasting sales and profits – apparently the management at Palm has no idea just how bad this is going to get. Needless to say, this is incredibly bad for Palm. They seem to have no plan to get back on track, and like a deer stuck staring at the headlights of an oncoming slaughter, Palm is frozen in its tracks, unable to even fathom what their next move should be.
Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm, said that, “We did not execute as well as we need to,” and that the company would undergo a “fundamental transformation” to get back to being profitable. A fundamental transformation should include a changing of the guard over at Palm, but it’s up to the management to decide just who gets the ax. That is, in addition to all of those employees that will be getting the pink slip this holiday season.
Good luck, Palm. You were an innovator once, and we expected great things from you. We sincerely hope you get your act together and stop milking that damn Treo line. It’s dying, and dying fast. Get some new ideas and you might have a chance at re-capturing your once-glory.
[Via: Bloomberg]