Let me play the job of an analyst for once (though I am not one!):

Speculating, Palm may already have sold 1 million Palm Pre phones in six months with one major carrier in North America – Sprint. At this rate, Palm is selling 2 million smart phones at Sprint per year, not factoring the Palm Pixi phone (whose sale barely began in the previous quarter).

Verizon should easily sell over 2 milliom Palm Pre phones, though Verizon's number may come in at 3 million phones – at least 50% ahead of Sprint.

AT&T and Palm's global partners may sell between 2 to 4 million phones, but we will stick to the 2 million number to be conservative – because of AT&T, which expressed interest in the Palm Pre, but we have not received any definitive news to date.

So far, if we add up the sales numbers above, we have conservative sales of 6 million Palm Pre phones (2 million from Sprint, 2 million from Verizon, and 2 million from AT&T and global companies).

The Palm Pixi is a mass market phone because of its design, form factor, and cost. The Palm Pixi could easily sell in the range of 12 million phones, twice as many phones as the Palm Pre, but to be conservative we will assume that the Palm Pixi generates only 6 million in sales in 2010, half our estimate.

Now let us assume that because of the Palm Pixi, Palm sells only 4 million in Palm Pre phones, 2 million less than our 6 million estimate, because some of the Palm Pre's potential customers may decide to buy the Pixi.

Summary: So as a result of our analysis above, we will estimate a sales of 4 million Palm Pre phones and 6 million Palm Pixi phones in 2010.

Further assumption: Palm generates $300 million in revenue for approximately every 500,000 Palm Pre sold, and $150 million for every 500,000 Palm Pixi sold. (Note that these are not official number). If you are curious, these numbers calculate to a contract price of $600 for each Palm Pre phone, and $300 for each Palm Pixi phone. (Again, these are unofficial numbers – based upon intelligent guess).

Conclusion: In 2010, assuming that the Palm Pre sells 4 million (with revenues of $2.4 billion, deduced from above) and the mass market Palm Pixi sells 6 million (with revenues of $1.8 billion), Palm's revenue for 2010 could come in at $4.2 billion (this reflects the 2010 calender year, from Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 31, 2010, which does not reflect Palm's fiscal year). In contrast, Palm is currently generating revenue at the rate of approximately $1.2 billion for a 12 month period. But alas, Palm's revenue for the 2010 calender year would likely be much different from the numbers speculated here.

The third quarter should be more interesting. Here is the comparison – (a) Third quarter – Pre & Pixi phones at Sprint, and Pixi phone at Verizon; versus (b) Second quarter – mostly Pre phone at Sprint only. It is possible that both the Pre and Pixi phones will be released at Verizon in the third quarter, but the recent FCC filing only showed the Pixi.

If you look at the result, I am sure my “friends” the analysts will forgive Palm (for the small loss, above analyst estimates) since Palm's revenue did exceed analyst expectations. The reason is that you cannot penalize a company that is investing heavily in research and development. Palm has hired some top talents in the developer area, and the announcement that the Ares development platform has gone public beta is quite newsworthy, since it brings a level of innovation that should accelerating the development of applications for the Palm Pre and Pixi phones. And the 800 applications in Palm's App Catalog is sufficient sign that developer activities are accelerating for the webOS platform – all this, before the Ares platform was even released. This is an indication that Palm as a company will continue to surprise.

Palm has done more since the release of their smart phones to advance their products – barely six months old, than arguably any other company in the cell phone industry has ever done in the same period of time. This is an indication that the culture of innovation and “can do” within the company, runs quite deep!

Conclusion: Verizon is BIG news for Palm, and should factor in heavily in Palm's third quarter result. Verizon's advertising budget is massive – which she has used effectively to push other smart phones. The Palm webOS operating system and the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi are the closest things Verizon will have to a mass market smart phone product – to compete against it's major competitor, AT&T's iPhone. But so also will the Pixi at Sprint, which was released too late in the second quarter (two weeks before close), to factor much in the second quarter result. Taking these factors into consideration should give Palm's investors reasons for optimism in 2010!