CEO Paints a Rosy Picture of Palm's Future

Palm CEO Carl Yankowski said yesterday that his company expects to maintain its large share of the handheld market for the foreseeable future. In his speech to the investors at the Banc of America Technology Week Conference, he also said Palm has been quite successful recently in the low end of the market, selling over 535 thousand m100's in the first quarter, two-thirds of which were to students. "It was the most successful launch in our history," Yankowski said.

Palm has also recently signed contracts with 350 companies to give handhelds to their employees and is making increasing sales to schools and universities.

Looking to the future, he said that OS 4 is on track to be released in a few months and showed a prototype of the m505. He also brought up that his company will be releasing some new wireless handhelds in the second half of the year that will have "robust" e-mail and instant messaging capabilities.

Palm is working hard to increase sales overseas. International sales currently make up 38% of their revenue base but they are working to make it over 50%.

Some analysts, thought, aren't as confident about Palm's future, at least on the near term. Wit SoundView believes that Palm's earning for this quarter will come in at the very low end of management's estimates, mostly because the company is still suffering from component shortages. However, they still rate the company a strong buy.