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Palm, which makes smartphones like the Pre and Pixi, said Thursday that its sales declined slightly from the previous quarter, although they were still up sharply from a year ago.
The company trimmed its net loss and said it had shipped a total of 783,000 smartphones to retailers in its fiscal second quarter, which ended Nov. 27. That was up 41 percent compared with the second quarter last year, but down 5 percent compared with the first quarter.
Will the Palm Pre be the device to challenge not only the coolness, but the functionality and elegance of the iPhone? Some developers respond with a resounding yes.
Ian McFarland, a principal and vice president of technology at Pivotal Labs, which is a consultancy specializing in Web and mobile development, said he first started talking to Palm about the Pre last November, and “we realized it was not just another me-too platform.”
McFarland said he grudgingly waited in line to get a glimpse of the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, “but I came out really impressed,” he said.
“It has a first-class user experience, and one thing that stood out for us was the ease of development for the platform because it’s based on Web technology—HTML, CSS and JavaScript,” McFarland said of the Pre.
via Why Some Developers Think the Palm Pre Could Upstage the iPhone.
March 5 (Bloomberg) — Palm Inc.’s new Pre smart phone will lure customers away from Apple Inc.’s iPhone when subscribers’ contracts start expiring in June, Palm investor Roger McNamee said.
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” McNamee said today in an interview in San Francisco. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
Sprint Nextel Corp., the phone’s exclusive carrier, and Palm have said they will start selling the device in the first half of the year. Palm, which pioneered mobile devices with its Pilot products more than a decade ago, is counting on the Pre to help reverse six straight quarters of losses totaling more than $650 million.
“The timing and success of the Palm launch is now the critical factor,” said Maynard Um, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, who expects a late June release. This week, Palm posted preliminary third-quarter sales that fell short of analysts’ estimates by as much as 50 percent, citing waning demand for older models. The company is scheduled to report full results March 19.
The Pre features a full touch-screen cover that slides up to reveal a Qwerty keyboard, designed to appeal to both iPhone fans and traditional smart-phone users. Speculation about the price and the release date has circulated on the Web since Sunnyvale, California-based Palm unveiled the Pre in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.