Comments on: palmOne Shares Jump on Treo 600 Demand

Again, the difference between the T600 and other smartphone platforms is that it is truly a business communicator but looks and feels like a phone. This will make it a long term platform. Thus, it is the new standard.

(I know..."What about the Samsung, Blackberry, etc.?"...Bottom line, either they aren't thumboard email monsters or they aren't good phones.)

Perhaps you're right, but I think you're making a bit of a stretch there. Just because palmOne announced that demand has outpaced supply, it doesn't mean that this is the #1 smartphone. Curiously absent from Ryan's news-blurb was any mention of exactly how many of these phones they've sold. Were hard numbers given at the analyst conference referred to? If palmOne builds ten of these and company X asks for twenty, the demand has outpaced the supply but it doesn't mean that they've got the #1 smartphone (or even a successful smartphone, for that matter).

I'm not saying that they don't. I'm just saying that I'd like to see some actual numbers. I seem to recall Donna Dubinsky telling investors on just about each and every quarterly financial conference call about how they lost money in this quarter but she expected them to be profitable the next (or the one after the next) and yet it never happened. So you'll excuse me for taking with a grain of salt the glowing comments they make about themselves.

Scott

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go and buy the SonyEricsson P900!

THIS is what the TREO should be :-)"

Walter Mossberg didn't entirely agree with you. You can read his review at http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040304.html.

Scott

Your insightful comment will be met with deafening silence here. Early in 2003, Palm knew thew would be unable to ship the Treo 600 for a number of reasons that I won't repeat here. They also know that it's easier for analysts to downgrade the company and for investors to get skittish when poor sales figures are announced every quarter. So Palm's new policy is to lump all sales together so that outsiders can't easily tell how individual models are selling. Smart move, since they're betting the company on the success of the Treo lineup and poor sales figures = bad press = stock price crash = dead Palm.

You want a number? Here's one: Less than 100,000 Treo 600 MADE (and even less SOLD) since the launch (such as it was) in October 2003. Solectron may be contracted to make more Treo 600 this Spring, but Palm's claims regarding the percentage of income they will derive from Treo 600 is more reflective of tanking standalone PDA sales than it is of vigorous Treo 600 sales.

Palm isn't being dishonest with the numbers - they're just manipulating the info as best they can given that their backs are up against the wall.

Looking at what Sony Ericsson has done with their slick T610 and ultra-slick T630 cellphones, the advances seen going from the P800 to the P900, and the engineering that went into the TH-55 and new UX, the P1000 should be the coup de grace for the Treo lineup.

At least Palm has finally wised up and started targeting who they should have been courting all along: BUSINESSES. A PalmOS P900-type smartphone with Word/Excel/email/web browser etc. apps installed could have made Palm a player in businesss. If they had released it last year. Unfortunately, Palm just doesn't have the cash to keep up with the big boys and will soon be an also ran. The Treo 600 showed us what a smartphone could do, but it will be up to other companies to take these ideas to the next level and make smartphones as essential for business as cellphones and laptops are now.

It's just too big.

Looking at what Sony Ericsson has done with their slick T610 and ultra-slick T630 cellphones, the advances seen going from the P800 to the P900, and the engineering that went into the TH-55 and new UX, the P1000 should be the coup de grace for the Treo lineup.

It's just too big."

Your comments, as always, show why opinion should never be expressed as fact. It seems unlikely that Palm is staking their future on the Treo 600. It is a second generation product that will be improved upon in future releases. The Treo line may ultimately fail but to argue that the Treo 600 will determine the fate of Palm's smartphone business is naive.

Your infatuation with Sony products is quite obvious and you are correct when saying that they manufacture quality products. My Sony Ericsson phone has never let me down and my kids seem to love their Sony pda's. The UX50 is a cute handheld with solid engineering. However, it is difficult for me to envision anyone I do business with getting excited about the same pda that my daughter's use to play games and to organize both their class schedules and baby sitting jobs.

The fact that Sony makes good phones and pda's is somewhat beside the point. The Sony rules the world point of view has always seemed misguided to me. While it is unlikely that I will ever own one, my guess is that PalmOne and the Treo line will be around for a long time.

"It's just too big."?? Are you talking about your ego?

Your comments make you sound more like a pre-pubescent child than an informed adult capable of intelligently commenting on the future of Palm, Sony or any other company. I think I hear your mommy calling, it must be nap time.

What?

It's just too big.

Report card:

Design = B+ (loses marks for horrible camera, low res screen, no Bluetooth)

Public acceptance = C (100,000 sales won't keep Palm afloat)

Carrier acceptance = A (Most of the big boys in the USA have come on board and Verizon is just a few weeks away. European market penetration is light years beyond what Handspring previously achieved)

Developer acceptance = B+ (Palm did a good job encouraging support of the Treo's features)

It's just too big.

While I know there are no more than a handful of CDMA Palm-based smartphones out there, you'd think Verizon would at least have slashed the price of the Kyocera (it was ridiculously overpriced, considering its capabilities as compared to the newer units) and kept it around a while longer or offered at least one of the OS4-based Samsungs.

Also, were Verizon a little more visionary, they could have been one of the initial carriers to carry the Treo 600, instead of the last major one to offer it. I see "stringest testing procedures" as an excuse for being lazy and slow to respond to provide the handsets that the market wants to buy. At least they have a few more choices in flip phones than they used to...

If you want a BT phone I'd wait for the Moto V710: http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=475

Verizon doesn't mfg. phones. VZW would love it if Nokia, Ericsson, Moto, etc. would provide phones configured for their CDMA network. Nokia has waited until last year with TI's help, to finally design their own CDMA chipset so they can mfg phones for VZW. Were they too cheap to pay for Qualcomm's chipset???

http://www.nordicwirelesswatch.com/wireless/story.html?story_id=3111

VZW is driven to provide what customers want, but they aren't going to start building the phones. Why doesn't Samsung, Kyocera and the like offer full featured phones to VZW? The truth is they don't have the capacity to build the phones. All the mfg's are operating at or near capacity to bring their current offerings to market. Motorola was late to market with their camera phones and missed the 2003 holiday season.

http://www.chipzilla.com/default.aspx?article=13060

What is so great about a BT phone from ATT Wireless, Sprint or Cingular? A BT phone on a crappy network is useless.

http://www.noatt.com/images/ATTfree.gif

Waiting for the midyear release of the V710.....

It's just too big.

Enhanced Datebook (Calendar)

Slide-out camera

"Stretch" display

It took a while (OK, too damned long!), but they haven't exactly been slouches lately.

Sony has yet to offer portrait/landscape switching.

Sony has yet to offer portrait/landscape switching.

Who did the coding allowing portrait/landscape switching. Look it up, Caney. Or ask Mr. Combee. Palm's coding talent is feeble at this point and the company has needed to parasitize developments from Sony etc. to survive.

Who did the "roll out" camera first?

Who "enhanced" Palm's Datebook?

It's just too big.