Palm’s Pre: Salvation in Sunnyvale?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on February 23, 2009 at 8:21 AM PT
Palm’s new hail-Mary handset, the Pre, has serious Miracle-in-Miami potential if the latest word from Deutsche Bank is to be believed. In a note to clients today, Deutsche analyst Jonathan Goldberg was decidedly optimistic about Pre’s chances of lifting Palm (PALM) out of its downward spiral. “After channel checks and a company meeting with Palm at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona we are raising our rating on Palm to Buy,” he wrote. “We see clear signs that they are capable of executing to plan and shipping the Pre at least on time. We found a lot of carrier interest in the device as well.”
That bodes well for Palm, which appears to be well on its way to reversing its long downward trajectory and shifting the company story from also-ran to in-the-running. “Palm has been beaten down for so long that even a modest success could generate significant earnings leverage,” Goldberg concluded. “Numbers in the next two quarters will still be dismal, but the Pre offers a meaningful break with the past.”
Comments
Jon, Jon, Jon….
How can you be offering a “buy” rating on a company who is basing its entire future off technology Apple is saying they stole. Are you really that short-sighted? What happens to those poor investors who buy PALM based on your rating, thus getting it out of it’s “downward spiral” only to see it ultimately go nose first for the ground once Apple wins it’s lawsuit? Very irresponsible of you to offer a buy rating without knowing more about the merits of Apple’s lawsuit against PALM.
Posted by Scott Stephens at February 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 amFirst of all Scott if I were you I would get your facts straight. To date Apple has not filed any lawsuits against Palm nor has it indicated it intends to, but rather it has indicated that it will defend its intellectual property where it deems necessary and quite rightly so. Secondly you should also note that most of the technology Apple uses did not originate from engineers at Apple, however that should not prevent one from admiring Apple for what it created. Nevertheless, Palm has taken has truly dropped the gauntlet in front of Apple and it appears that it is Apple’s turn to now catch up with Palm, however Palm is at the very least a year ahead of the competition.
Posted by darius arya at February 24th, 2009 at 1:10 am