As a result of the highly speculative analyst report yesterday that postulated that Elevation may be looking to divest itself of its Palm investment, Elevation Partners co-founder and Palm Board member Roger McNanmee, has released a statement reasserting their position. In short, Mr. McNammee states that Elevation remains quite excited about Palm's progress and next generation operating system and they have no plans back out of their Palm investment. The statement in full reads:

"Elevation Partners is very pleased with the progress Ed Colligan, Jon Rubinstein and the entire Palm team are making. The Company's product pipeline, including a next generation operating system due out soon and a new device targeted for the first half of 2009, excite us enormously. Elevation supports Palm in taking the difficult but necessary steps required to migrate from legacy products. We have a very long-term investment horizon and have no plans to exit our investment in Palm."

Opera Software has released a new version of its Opera Mini mobile web browser. v.4.2 loses the beta status and according to the company brings more than a 30% speed improvement for users in the US, due to the addition of a new Opera Mini server park in the United States. Opera Mini 4.2 also adds more language versions, browser skin selections and improved streaming video and youtube support on select phones.

Users can download the latest version by visiting mini.opera.com on your phone. In order to use Opera Mini with a Palm OS device you need to have the Palm Java Micro Environment installed. Since Palm no longer distributes the JVM you need to already have it installed or find an alternate source (download link) for it online. Also see our recent article on Palm OS web browsing for the optimal Java settings for Opera Mini on Palm OS.

Treo Pro, is listed as now being available through tech product distributor giants D&H, Ingram Micro, and Tech Data according to the company's latest Channelsource newsletter. The Pro's SRP is still indicated as the launch price of $549, so the price drop some had speculated was imminent (myself included) is not happening for the foreseeable future.

Palm has also just announced that the Treo Pro is now available in Latin America from carriers in seven countries.

Less than a month after the previous update, another minor but nonetheless recommend update for the Palm OS version of Kinoma Player has been released. According to the Kinoma blog, v4.5.2 address a bug on the Palm TX where Kinoma Player would not connect after using PTunes or Blazer. A more substantial new update was also recently made available for company's Windows Mobile Kinoma client, Kinoma Play.

As always, the update is free for both the free Kinoma Player and the purchased Kinoma Player 4 EX and can be downloaded manually from a PC or on a Palm device with an active data connection.

Skyfire Labs have released a new beta version of their web browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian s60 smartphones. Skyfire is designed to deliver a desktop-like browsing experience on the small screen. The browser supports full web browsing, and comes with the ability to handle rich media content such as streaming flash video, Ajax , Quicktime, Windows Media and others. The new beta features numerous improvements and performance tweaks and is now available as a direct download and registration is no longer required. It is also no longer restricted to just US and Canadian users and addes VGA support on select Windows Mobile devices.

Skyfire 0.8.5 beta is available as a free download from get.skyfire.com. The software runs natively on the device and utilizes a proxy for rendering and transcoding all content. If you are upgrading, the company strongly recommend users first uninstall any previous versions.

Following a week of vaporizing share prices, stock downgrades and layoffs, Palm starts this week of with another negative financial portrayal. CNBC's tech reporter, Jim Goldman, has published a highly critical editorial entitled Palm Gets A Big Thumbs Down. The article largely draws upon a newly released research note from Pablo Perez-Fernandez, the wireless analyst at Global Crown Capital, who also coincidentally downgraded the stock again today.

Perez-Fernandez chides the Palm's strategy to pay a one-time, $900 million dividend to engineer Elevation's 25 percent stake last year saying "made no sense then, and is even more difficult to swallow today." He also makes the suggestion that Elevation may be looking to divest, though he basically admits this is largely his own speculation. He goes on to postulate that Palm's recent shelf registration would significantly dilute shares and might give Elevation further motivation to get out. That move would be quite extraordinary considering three of Elevation's primary leaders currently occupy seats on Palm's board.

(Updated, with confirmation statement)
PalmInfocenter has received a couple of unconfirmed reports that Palm Inc. has had a round of layoffs this week. One report from a reliable source claims as many as 200 people were let go from the US team on Thursday. Most of the cuts are claimed to be in the sales and marketing departments. Sources also postulate that Palm will be closing some offices in Europe and Asia as well.

The news comes during a rather rough week for Palm's stock and the US stock market in general. Shares in Palm closed at a new all time low over continued uncertainly about the general economy and Palm's long planned turnaround. The last major round of layoffs came around this time last year when around 250 people were cut. Palm's last reported head count in August was around 1,050 employees.

While certainly a slim and sleek device, the Treo Pro's smaller formfactor is a major factor in its reduced battery capacity compared to its older Treo brethren. Despite the substantial improvement made in the new Treo Pro's stock battery over the meager 1150mAh offering found in the Treo 800w and Centro, many power users have still been clamoring for a higher-capacity battery alternative.

Fortunately, longtime accessory specialists Seidio have come to the rescue once again with the surprising release of a new 1650mAh extended OEM-size battery for the Treo Pro. The new Seidio 1650mAh Innocell battery is identical in size to the stock 1500mAh Treo Pro battery yet offers 10% more capacity (or, 150mAh, though Seidio strangely calls it 15% more). As with all of Seidio's OEM-sized batteries, the stock black battery door does not need to be replaced and the physical dimensions of the Treo are not increased.

Since its announcement in August rumors have been about of a CDMA variant of the Treo Pro smartphone. A good three months later and still all we have is speculation and more rumors. Today the Boy Genius Report is throwing another one out there, this time claiming the Treo Pro will debut on Sprint in early 2009. The BGR report does not name any sources or provide any supporting evidence, thought they do claim to have a release date of January 11th (a Sunday).

Nevertheless, there has been some recent evidence to support a upcoming Treo Pro release on Sprint. In late October a log entry showed up on a mobile speed test website that seemed to indicate a new version of the Pro was spotted being tested on the Sprint wireless network. Coincidentally, the Treo 800w was outed earlier this year in similar fashion, approximately two months prior to its actual release.

Palm's stock price dropped another 21% today to close at 1.76. It nearly goes without saying that the todays price represents a new all time low. On a day where the Dow closed below 8,000 and the Nasdaq under 1,400, Palm ended the trading day with a $192 million market cap.

Like most other equities in the past couple of months, the stock has seen sharp declines since the current economic crisis emerged. Just over two weeks ago the stock received a double dose of downgrades from financial analysts on account of slowing sales and uncertainty surrounding Palm's long planned turnaround.

Bapsoft has released a new version of its Bubble Pop game for Palm OS. Bubble Pop is a colorful puzzle game with a simple yet highly addictive design. Your goal is to empty the bubble tank by popping bubbles in groups of three or more. You'll have to be quick to complete each level before your time runs out. The latest version features improved graphics and sound effects as well at the ability to auto-save your game so you can return at any time and pickup where you left off.

Bubble Pop v2.0 is available now for $14.95. A free trial period is included. The game is compatible with devices with a 320x320 pixel screen running Palm OS 5 and above.