Shares in Palm Inc. took a hard hit following last Thursday's Earnings announcement. The subsequent investor conference call did little to settle wary investors either as shares of Palm Inc hit a new 52 week low. Shares of PALM closed at $4.0045 on Friday, down over a point and a half, more than 30% single day decline.

The sell off was also fueled by some new analyst predictions and pessimistic financial reports. Peter Misek of Canaccord Adams, dropped his price target on the stock to zero. Quoted at MarketWatch he reports...

"We believe Palm's troubles will only accelerate as carriers and suppliers increasingly question the company's solvency and withdraw their support, […] With what appears to be roughly 12 months of cash on hand, an accelerating burn rate, a complete lack of earnings visibility, and substantial debt and preferred equity, we no longer see any value in the company's common equity."

One of today's most hotly-discussed topics in the Palm blogosphere focuses around some scintillating comments made by Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein during the Q3 2010 earnings call. In particular, Rubinstein indicated that the Pre Plus' lackluster performance on Verizon was due to unfortunate timing, inadequate point of sale training and that the Pre Plus is a far superior to Verizon's current smartphone of choice, the Motorola Droid:

We had an arrangement with Sprint that when we launched with Sprint that they would invest in marketing and carry the product and for that they would get an exclusive for a period of time. That really determined when we could do our launch at Verizon…if we could have launched at Verizon earlier, prior to Droid, that we would have gotten the attention that the Droid got and since I believe that we have a better product, I think we would have even done better.

Palm, Inc. today reported that total revenues on a GAAP basis in the third quarter of fiscal year 2010, ended Feb. 26, 2010, were $349.9 million. Gross profit and gross margin on a GAAP basis were $47.0 million and 13.4 percent, respectively. In accordance with two recently released accounting standards related to revenue recognition, these results include the effects of accounting for multiple-element arrangements, including ratable revenue recognition for the future deliverables for Palm webOS products as required by GAAP.

"Our recent underperformance has been very disappointing, but the potential for Palm remains strong," said Jon Rubinstein, Palm chairman and chief executive officer. "The work we're doing to improve sales is having an impact, we're making great progress on future products, and we're looking forward to upcoming launches with new carrier partners. Most importantly, we have built a unique and highly differentiated platform in webOS, which will provide us with a considerable - and growing - advantage as we move forward."

Barron's Tech Trader Daily columnist Eric Savitz has written a new post entitled "Palm: Canaccord Cuts Ests Again; Says AT&T Launch Delayed". The piece by Mr. Savitz brings to light a number of issues with the long rumored AT&T launch for Palm's webOS devices. In fact, the Palm AT&T launch is looking to be in peril, according to Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, prominently quoted in Savitz's piece.

Misek maintains his "sell" rating on Palm stock and cautions across-the-board drops in regard to Palm's sales figures and revenue. The most distressing news comes with the report that AT&T has delayed the Pre and Pixi launch to June or July from the originally scheduled April. It should be noted that we have yet to see any solid release date mentioned regarding Palm's latest devices on AT&T other than the already-reported May timeframe gleaned from the FCC documentation.

A recently distributed AP article about the latest sales woes at Palm Inc. reaches into the timelines of Palm Inc's not too distant past and pulls out some interesting disclosures and quotes. While the article focuses on the present situation Palm Inc. finds itself in, the author peppers up his piece with a few choice quotes from former Palm/HandSpring CEO Donna Dubinsky. Mrs. Dubinsky was one of the founding members of Palm Inc. and until last year retained a seat on Palm's board of directors.

In the midst of explaining the series of spin offs and corporate restructuring shenanigans that seem to have plagued Palm Inc. throughout its lifetime, Dubinsky admits that in hindsight the decision to create PalmSource and spin off the Palm OS was a "huge strategic error."

Dubinsky said all the shuffling took "critical resources and attention from product development." And even though it happened years ago, she called the decision to spin off PalmOS a "huge strategic error."

"As RIM, Apple and Palm all have demonstrated, these devices need to be highly integrated hardware and software developments in order to optimize the user experience," Dubinsky wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "When Palm no longer could advance the OS, and had to create a new one, it lost several years."

A couple of webOS hackers have released some preliminary details about a new processor overclocking method for the Palm Pre. The modification boosts the Palm Pre's processor up to 800 Mhz (from the default 600 Mhz), which results in a dramatic difference in overall performance. The developers have posted a video demo showing the over-clocked device in action. (Embeed after the break.)

This method utilizes a customized kernel and various patches to max out the megahertz. Currently the method works with webOS 1.3.5.1, but work on a more stable 1.4 release is promised. The video demonstrates a preview the utility and its impact on system performance on a GSM Palm Pre running webOS 1.4

Palm's developer center has posted a nice tutorial on developing a game for webOS. The detailed tutorial focuses on using the HTML5 Canvas element for most of the graphics and animation.

The tutorial walks through all the steps in planning and developing a webOS game from scratch. The author builds out a game called Far Out Fowl, which is something of a Atari era Kaboom! clone. The game includes accelerometer based controls, sound effects and exploding alien chickens. The author Frank Zammetti also include the full source code (on GitHub) and does a good deal of explaining the basics of developing a game using Canvas.

Palm Inc. has reintroduced its developer purchase program. The program offers developers a small discount on certain webOS phones when purchased directly from Palm.

The developer purchase program gives registered Palm developers in the U.S. and Canada a 20% discount on the current array of webOS devices. The prices are based on the full retail price, so don't expect to see any post rebate/subsidy price tags. The models currently offers are also all CDMA and still come locked to each particular carrier.

The site currently lists the Verizon Pre Plus for $479, Sprint Pre for $439, and the Pixi and Pixi Plus for $319.

Walmart has dramatically lowered its price on a new Palm Pre Plus this week. Online bargain hunters can now find the updated version of the Palm Pre on Verizon for $29.99 after the usual rebates and contract commitments.

Walmart.com started offering the Pre Plus for only $29 after rebates yesterday. The site also offers a free Pixi Plus (after rebates) as well. Amazon.com has also lowered its intro prices on Palm devices as well, where a Pre Plus can currently be found for $39.99 with a new 2-year service plan.

comScore, Inc. has released its latest data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month period between October 2009 and January 2010. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers age 13 and older, as well as popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber's primary mobile phone.

The January report found Motorola to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.9 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 43.0 percent market share. During the period Palm Inc. dropped 2.1 percentage points to settle down at 5.7% of the US mobile market.

Palm, Inc. has announced that a public beta version of the Palm webOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is now available at the Palm Developer Center. Palm is demonstrating new games from early PDK developers in its booth at GDC (No. 2016).

The PDK complements the Palm webOS Software Development Kit (SDK), letting developers use C and C++ alongside the web technologies that power the SDK and mix them seamlessly within a single app. The PDK enables new functionality, including immersive 3D graphics, and gives developers who have built games for other platforms an easy way to bring their titles to the webOS platform. Developers can download the beta PDK and start developing today, but distribution of games built with the beta PDK will require functionality provided in an upcoming Palm webOS update.