At 37.9 percent, Nokia’s share of the global handset market is the largest in the industry. Odd then to learn that it is not the most profitable. And odder still to learn that that honor belongs to Apple, which has been in the handset market for just two years.
Apple appears to have a particular affinity for the unwritten no-poaching agreements said to be so popular among the nation’s biggest tech companies. Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that Apple may have quietly negotiated an agreement with Google not to hire away each other’s top talent. Now, Bloomberg claims that the company attempted to win a similar commitment from Palm, but was rebuffed.
Now we know why it was Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein and investor Roger McNamee on stage at the D conference last month talking up the Pre, and not CEO Ed Colligan: Colligan was on his way out. On Wednesday, Palm tapped Rubinstein as its new CEO.
At long last, the Palm Pre has a price and a release date. Ending months of rumor and speculation, Palm and Sprint said this morning that the device will arrive at market nationwide June 6. Price: $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a cheesy $100 mail-in rebate.
Palm investor Roger McNamee isn’t drinking his own Kool-Aid, he’s drowning in it. In an interview with Bloomberg, McNamee–co-founder of Elevation Partners, which owns 39 percent of Palm–claimed iPhone owners will switch en masse to the Palm Pre when their contracts expire.
The debut of the Palm Pre can’t come soon enough for the long-suffering handset maker. Palm reported preliminary results for its third quarter after market close Tuesday, and they were ugly, to say the least.
This just in from the N.S. Sherlock Institute for the Bleeding Obvious: Palm’s new bet-the-company operating system, webOS is intended as a replacement for, not an alternative to, its embarrassingly antiquated Palm OS. Speaking at the Thomas Weisel Technology & Telecom Conference today, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said the company won’t release any more Palm OS-based products after the Centro hits end-of-life.
CEOs and Palm evangelists convinced that the company’s new Pre handset is anything more than table stakes at the handset poker game would do well to consider two bits of Apple news and rumor that suggest Cupertino may be hard at work on a next-generation handset capable of mercilessly beating all others into sobbing submission.
Palm bet the company on a new handset today. It’s called the Palm Pre, though given the company’s faltering business, a better name for it would have been the Palm Hail Mary. It seems a slick little device. But is it formidable enough to stand its ground next to Apple’s iPhone? Palm certainly seems to think so. In fact, the company is so confident in the Pre that CEO Ed Colligan seems to think it won’t need a sub-$200 price point to pull market share from Apple.
Is it too late for Palm? Elevation Partners doesn’t think so. The private equity firm has agreed to make an additional $100 million investment in the foundering smartphone maker, which last week reported an abysmal second quarter and its sixth consecutive loss.
“We’re working through an undeniably difficult period.” That’s what Palm CEO Ed Colligan had to say about the company’s second-quarter earnings today. An honest admission, but something of a euphemism given Palm’s abysmal financial performance this quarter.
The invitation-only event Palm plans to hold during the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in early January promises “all that Palm New-ness you’ve been waiting for.” And after five straight quarterly losses and a year in which it lost two-thirds of its market value, Palm best deliver on that promise.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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