The Motley Fool Paints A Pale View of Palm's Stock
The Motley Fool web site has posted a new article by Tim Beyers to its Investing section entitled "Palm Will Burn Your Portfolio". In short, the article pulls no punches when discussing Palm's stumbles over the past several years and simply calls Palm "The worst stock in the world". After delving further into the article to reach beyond the topic of stock performance, Beyers' piece goes onto paint a dismal picture for the handheld pioneer that essentially jump-started the entire modern PDA/smartphone sector in 1996. Also found within the article is a smattering of undated Gartner marketshare numbers to back up the article's tone.
This piece really hits hard at Palm's dismay performance during four consecutive quarterly losses by virtue of being focused on outright financial (non-)performance in contrast to more forgiving, tech-related pieces bolstering Palm's future outlook based on their past successes. None of the Palm OS core strengths such as compelling ease-of-use, 3rd party app flexibility, and the Centro's value relative to competing smartphones from RIM, Apple and Microsoft licensees are touted within the article.
Discussed prominently, however, are the Centro's razor-thin profit margins and the enormous resource drain that was the now-cancelled Foleo subnotebook. Ed Colligan, Palm's long-tenured CEO, is also called into question despite being the enthusiastic leader but not the aggressive innovator Palm needs to rescue them from their dire predicament of a tired line of products lacking "mojo".
The piece concludes with an overall assessment that questions the viability of Palm Inc. as a viable, ongoing corporate entity: "…with well-funded competition, poor financials, and borderline management, Palm is the worst stock in this burn contest and perhaps in the world - the sort that will make your portfolio bleed red."
The aging Palm OS Garnet's lack of pizzazz and market share is the focal point of the article, with no mention made of the overhauled Nova OS currently in the works at Palm. Palm's most recent higher-end efforts, Windows Mobile 6.1 such as the Treo 800w and rumored Treo 850, are also not discussed at any length other than a brief mention of the continued irony of Windows Mobile's presence amongst Palm's traditional Garnet-based offerings.
Despite the Fool article's claim of many happy Palm OS users in its online community, few are bullish on the stock & company that was once the darling of both NASDAQ and the mobile computing industry, with a few choice comments from members of Motley Fool's CAPS community tossed in the article for good measure. The article's outlook is so bearish on Palm stock that some of the Palm faithful may want to double-check their Treo cases for claw marks for the foreseeable future.
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RE: That article panning PALM was requested
(FWIW, I consider that a rather important aside and, as usual, many thanks for the tidbit)
Did the Fool's recent change in heart on Palm coincide with the May UBS downgrade report seen here?
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7652/ubs-downgrades-palm-to-sell/
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
Absolutely.
Since I first saw the Mossberg preview of the Treo 180 (and its expected selling price) I thought "They've got to be kidding me"; it IS what got me interested in Handspring stock since I then and STILL did not think such a niche device could sustain a company forever (*). Other than actually owning a Palm III (What an EXPENSIVE mistake for my life style!) I did not at ALL look into Palm until surprised by the Handspring/Palm merger, a merger brought about because it turns out BOTH Palm and Handspring were failing companies whose niche devices weren't sustaining them forever!
Palm eventually moved on to more interesting devices and addressed a customer set that had the money to pay for them but, as always, The Big Guys came in and wiped the floor with Palm; they're not STUPID - they don't "leave money on the table"; they see a market that potentially is large enough to sustain an entire (dinky) company then they're IN, Big Time...with dinky Palm unable to compete.
The Centro appears to be "selling" to a customer set that Hand/Palm never addressed before. This is good for Palm at the moment (that is, IF they actually make ANY money at all from the Centro, something I personally believe they do NOT due to the IMHO-evasive answer the CFO gave when directly asked if it did make money - I think the Centro (and its marketing, etc) is actually a LOSS item at the moment). But are Those Same Big Guys going to IGNORE that customer set!? Puhleeeze...
So Palm's gonna come out with an OS and platform (**) "soon" - we already know the phones with that "platform" are going to address the same rich-folk niche, not the Centro customer set. Will sales of it be enough to sustain a company in the face of massive Big Guy competition? We'll see!
==========
(*) A lot of folks have VERY short horizons when talking corporations, when actually they should have long ones if not simply trading a company's stock on a daily basis. Being FIRST with a product-type is GREAT for trading a stock on a daily basis, but simply not good enough for long-term sustenance.
(**) A lot of folks seem to be ignoring that "platform" part of the words surrounding Nova. In the deep distant past (2003? 2004?) I've made posts about the potential for something like a mix-n-match "component system" that would auto-sync etc etc etc with functionality spread across the devices as needed/desired. To make one up on the fly...a phone that has a large screen and works well as a phone MAYBE with a built-in not-that-great camera that's good for quickie snapshots. In the same component system is a PC with a file folder (or two) full of high-quality images and videos. In the same component system is an SLR camera that takes massively large-sized beeyootteeful images. And all the components talk to each other effortlessly. You take a picture with your SLR and the "phone" has access to the image without effort, ready for emailing, say. You put the camera down by the computer and the PC has your images. Etc documents etc other media etc games etc - getting diverse components to work with each other seemlessly might be a cool niche feature that could get Palm sold quickly! Because even with a cool FIRST platform The Big Guys are still there.
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
To take those autosync words a little further...The Fooleo had the ability to "autosync" =only= for programs that had been specially rewritten (according to ...er...something-Combee-or-something?; I'm lousy with names...). Poking into the Palm-black-box with a stick from the outside, I think that feeble attempt to slap future-think onto the ancient PalmOS is what drove the initial thoughts of junking PalmOS and coming up with something designed from the ground up; applications need to be designed form the start to fit into The Fooleo's (potential) world.
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
Add "instant on" to the same "autosync" words - the applications had to be specially rewritten to allow "instant on" as well.
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
RE: That article panning PALM was requested
These "anal-ysts" have more inside and/or institutional conflicts of interest than you can shake a stick at. When I saw the headline about MF's "outlook", my first thot was uh-oh, Palm may be getting ready to see some serious cash coming into it in a little while. After getting the price first suppressed of course.
SVs original comments hit the nail on the head. The others are plausible and quite interesting as well.
Pat Horne
The motive behind the article!!!
Published this article at this moment make me thinking of the motives behind. IMO, I think either Tim Beyers shorted a lot of Palm shares or someone paid him to write this article.
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
If I sell 2 million widgets and make 5˘ per widget but I'm in debt to the tune of $400 million then maybe my stock price is iffy at best.
If I sell 2 million widgets but, when taking into account all the new and large marketing costs, etc I've used to attract those customers, I lose $3 per widget then maybe I'm "that bad".
Take a pick.
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Who knows at this point if it will work out, but I would hope that any business-minded person can see what Palm(aka Ed C.) is trying to pull off here...
I'm not about the margin on "widgets", you are correct in that the margins are thin, and the marketing costs are high, but that my no means makes the company "that bad". It's all about strategy at this point because the mobile smart/phone industry has some downright fierce competition with not that many companies making strong profits.
The strategy is to lure more customers back to Palm and restore their name as the "cool and easy to use" smartphone manufacturer. Mission accomplished? Maybe, maybe not, but their image in the eyes of the consumer is 10-fold better than it was a year ago (remember the companies image to the consumer and to wall street aren't necessarily the same)
It's a long road ahead, but considering the circumstances, I'd say they have the best possible strategy for the time being, and it's working very well so far. We'll just have to wait and see how the end-game pans out.
With their stock still in the 6's, I'd say buy now or next time it drops and ride the wave. Best case scenario the rally with Palm OS II, worst case scenario it flops and they get bought out. Chances are the stock won't go much lower either way.
Just my two cents...
Tungsten T -> Palm TX -> TX & Centro (Good combo so far!)
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
I think the Centro's "success" totally floored Palm's management and thus became their "strategy" totally unplanned.
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Tungsten T -> Palm TX -> TX & Centro (Good combo so far!)
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
2. The 755p would, in all likelihood, never been released and/or been rushed to market sooner (to replace the 700p). It's painfully obvious the Centro cannibalized sales & stole whatever momentum the 755p/680 had remaining. Palm was not expecting this, or at least not to the degree that it did occur. Less than 5 months passed between the 755p's arrival on Sprint and the similar-but-superior-in-most-every-way, cheaper Centro on Sprint.
And Verizon didn't get their 755p out until nearly three months after the Centro was on Sprint! Verizon effectively had 6 months with the 755p before it was EOL'd in favor of the Centro. I know the phone market moves that quickly but Palm NEVER moves THAT quickly!
3. Palm didn't start off with a huge marketing blitz with the Centro. It has sort of built up gradually over the past 8-9 months as the device exceeded everyone's expectations (they're running ads in People and/or US Weekly magazines, fer cryin' out loud!). It was almost like Palm was so befuddled over the Fooleo & 700p debacles of last year + the news that the "new" Linux-based OS was forthcoming (remember, the Nova codename didn't leak out until early '08) that they almost put the Centro on the backburner until it hit the ground running.
4. Rubinstein's arrival. He probably arrived at Palm last year, took one look at the detritus comprising Palm's sad lineup and figured the Centro had the best chance of anything in the immediate pipeline of being "hot". The WSJ article from last fall basically said as much.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8065/wsj-on-the-rubinstein-influence-at-palm/
"In mid-July, as Palm Inc. was putting the finishing touches on its new $99 Centro smart phone, the gadget's development team received a stark message: It wasn't good enough...Mr. Rubinstein wasn't happy with the Centro's final touches, so he ordered several Palm executives to get on a plane to Asia to work more closely with the company's contract manufacturers. He asked product managers to look at details that hadn't been discussed before, such as whether the Centro's keyboard could be easily viewed in bright sunlight...Since it typically takes at least 18 months to develop new phones from scratch, it may take years for Mr. Rubinstein's impact to show up. "With the business smart-phone market dominated by RIM and the personal smart-phone market dominated by Apple, it's hard to say where Palm's opportunity is," says Andy Neff, an analyst at Bear Stearns & Co"
This is a much less significant sign but a sign nonetheless:
5. Look at the delay between the Centro's arrival and the "Now You Know" book hitting store shelves. Come on, Palm OS devices have been essentially changed for years and the core functionality of the CDMA Palm OS smartphones hasn't been fundamentally changed since the 700p in '06 (when the camera, photos, & messaging apps received facelifts). I am sure a Centro book could have been pumped out ~6 months or more ago had they felt a pressing need to get one out quickly. Again, I share SV's belief that recent events (Google Maps only for Centro, two VersaMail updates for the Centro only, the Centro book quietly appearing etc) clearly indicate that the Centro has, for better or worse, influenced Palm's strategy going forward.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Palm brought out the Centro specifically to cannibalize the Treo. Imagine if a telco had a lot of issues with Treos (buzzing, high replacement rate, firmware upgrade fiascos, etc.). Imagine if someone at a large telco said, "No more Treos!".
Now, imagine Palm retooling the Treo 680, going back to telcos and saying, "... it's not a Treo, ... it's a Centro!"
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Herein lies the problem with that strategy. Palm's making cheapness their main selling point instead of, say, sexy design, attractive UI, or feature-richness. That doesn't really make for a compelling argument to continue buying Palm products, since low price isn't distinct to Palm.
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Sounds great if Palm pulls of their "truly cutting edge" predictions for Nova. But like JH keeps asking SV ... "Is their any evidence to those predictions"? Not much IMO.
Pat Horne
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
Whether it's true or not, it does put the keep-the-cheap-end-of-the-smartphone-market strategy we're attributing to Palm and Centro in perspective. That works as long as the bigger fish don't get around to putting a device into the cheaper end market. I think of the shuffle. Before the shuffle there were plenty of players in the sub-$100 market, lots with devices better than the shuffle on paper. After the shuffle, Apple's name and design sucked up that market like a hoover.
Hard to see how that wouldn't happen to the Centro's market when Apple gets around to it. I just don't believe that Palm can produce a cheaper, better phone than Apple if Apple decides it wants that market too.
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
> better phone than Apple if Apple decides it wants that market too.
I think Nokia, Samsung, LG are more likely upfront competitors down there in their space.
If there's money to be made - debateable if Palm is making money down there yet - then those Big Guys would be DUHmb not to try to make it.
[somewhere around here I made a couple posts, I think, about just this - as well as what could compete with a Centro - a nonprogrammable-yet-high-capability featurephone with a QWERTY and large screen]
RE: The motive behind the article!!!
>>>If there's money to be made - debateable if Palm is making money down there yet - then those Big Guys would be DUHmb not to try to make it.
>>>[somewhere around here I made a couple posts, I think, about just this - as well as what could compete with a Centro - a
>>>nonprogrammable-yet-high-capability featurephone with a QWERTY and large screen]
Yes. Palm has no hope in beating The Big Guys.
The stock will plummet
Makes you wonder if Nova is *that* good. They've just placed a ginormous bet on it.
RE: The stock will plummet
Time for a new platform. Android? Job's ClosedPhone?
RE: The stock will plummet
Who's to say that Nova's even real at this stage of the game? Now, just so no one accuses me of being a Microsoft or Apple-sponsored astroturfer-I HOPE NOVA is real. I HOPE Nova blows our socks off. I WISH that Palm would release a ginormous Nova demo video & FAQ to their website/blog TODAY. I HOPE I can add several Nova-powered devices to my sig's device history. But based on Palm's current & past efforts, I am sadly pessimistic that they can pull it off (and certainly am doubtful of their ability to bring out a full-featured, stable OS on shipping devices within the next 6-9 months)
I've been having a sneaking suspicion ever since, oh, early 2005 or so that Garnet is the end of the road for "Palm OS Anything" PERIOD:
1. Cobalt, for all of its many troubles, was REAL & EXISTED. Many people (Beersie, Ryan etc) fondled and/or saw first-hand demos of Cobalt hardware. Regardless of its stability problems, driver problems, lack of interest from hardware manufacturers etc. Cobalt DID exist, at least as a late alpha or early beta build.
2. Ditto for ALP (and let's keep in mind that it has not been "officially" cancelled or anything yet). We've seen tech demos, handsets running the hardware etc for well over a year now. What would apparently be ALP's biggest problem (aside from LiMo) is utter carrier indifference. Too bad Access can't whip up a quick deal with some Chinese hardware manufacturer and get an iPod Touch-style competitor onto the market pronto (thus bypassing all of those silly carrier approval/certification/testing hurdles!)
3. NOTHING has been seen of Nova. Nothing nothin' nuttin'! And if Palm is drumming up developer support, who will it be? Someone here recently tossed the usual gang of Palm faithful devleopers (Astraware, Dataviz, Normsoft). That was pretty much the bulk of the Fooleo's support and will likely comprise the initial victims of the Nova implosion.
The REAL question (IMO) is whether or not Nova was ever really intended to be "something" once upon a time. Or did someone just thunk up the Nova concept (around the time the Fooleo was cancelled) in order to buy Palm a year or two of extra time? Because, y'know, anything Linux-based nowadays makes for good PR & would help instill a sense of "urgency" at Palm while they set themselves up for acquisition, grabbing for more marketshare by piggybacking the company's fortunes on a faster-than-usual rollout of (mostly) rebranded WM efforts & loss-leading Centros so as to give Elevation Partners something close to a "huge" ROI (as recently stated by Colligan and reiterated by SV)
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p
RE: The stock will plummet
It's what Nokia should have done with the 770. (In fact, they should have STFU about the existence of a 770 and only released the next version!)
RE: The stock will plummet
Just read your EEE 1000 fondle report on your blog. I can assure you that the screen looks FAN-TASTIC under XP. The resolution button supports 800x600, 1024x600 (native), 1024x768 (scroll) & 1024x768 (compressed)
I have a 2gb stick of DDR2 & a 250gb HD en route so that should make really a nice portable powerhouse. I continue to be absolutely pleased with every facet of this achine other than the smudge-prone casing (My old EEE 4G 701's matte black casing was SO much nicer) and the BT performance. Well, I'd still like to have some way to force the CPU to stay overclocked all of the time at the expense of battery life but I doubt that'll happen as that goes against everything the Atom processor was designed to do.
I've given up on ever being able to fondle (much less buy) a Wind. I'm starting to think that it's as vaporous as....NOVA! Someone at MSI needs to be flogged for deciding to forsake the US market at the expense of producing a flood of rebranded units for the European market. I waited OVER THREE MONTHS to be able to buy a Wind and then gave in when the 1000H dropped in price.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p
RE: The stock will plummet
They can't get away with not building up expectations. Among the loyalists, expectations are already built; among everybody else, if you don't rub some hype on it, they really aren't going to care.
RE: The stock will plummet
Yes, I figured all that. But they only had the Linux version so all I could do is a witness report to my tech molestation. They need to retool that Linux for that screen and new buttons.
The keyboard, as I wrote, makes it a no-go for me, but otherwise it looks like a fine machine.
adama -> I have *no* expectations about Nova. Palm would *really* have to do what Colligan has hyped: a true *breathrough* level of innovation. I have my doubts. Many, many doubts. The only thing Palm can hope for is to be more nimble than Apple. Apple seems to have adopted a page from Palm's playbook, with slow releases. (Yet I understand that; all hands on deck with many software items being done.) Palm can pre-empt an iPod Air if that doesn't arrive next month (because my thinking is, if an iPod Air doesn't happen next month, it won't happen in January, either - see Apple adopting Palm release playbook...).
RE: The stock will plummet
OK Palm. It's high time for some hard evidence. After all you've been working on this for "four years" now. If you can't demo something on a TT5 or Treo 600 with overclocking, then forgeddabaddit! Let's see / hear some "anonymous" leaks already.
This is the only leak I've seen so far. Looks great, but I'm not sure about the source?
http://tinyurl.com/5hodcj
Pat Horne
RE: The stock will plummet
- http://tinyurl.com/limosownprfluff
W.r.t. Palm having developers on board for Nova - well, they appeared to have SOMEONE on board the Fooleo Development Titanic and, as we were all aghast to find out, they did an EXCELLENT job of preventing leaks about that Next Great Thing.
It thus would not surprise me at all that there already are developers on board the Nova Development Titanic (WAIT! I didn't type that!).
But with 20+ LiMo phones ALREADY out there and a fairly major carrier outright saying "We're going LiMo" I think it's gonna get hard for Palm to attract MORE developers (optimistically assuming there are some right now).
We also have Colligan's predictive words:
== "...Vivek Arya - Merrill Lynch
==
== And Ed, what milestones can we use to sort of track your
== progress on the new system software and the next generation
== products that you are working on?
==
== Edward T. Colligan
==
== Well, the only milestones that we've set out is to finish
== up the platform towards the end of this year and then deliver
== products in the first half of '09 and that's - those are
== the big milestones. I expect, you know, relative to the
== developer community and so forth, you might start to see
== some buzz but I can't predict any of that..."
Giggle...SURE he can't predict that...HA HA HA!
Gotta luv them planned leaks...
NOVA
Funny how Palm would go out of their way to lose money (or make very little) on cheapskates buying Centros, and have really "stuck it" to the Treo purchasers. So now the Treo Enterprise-level customers have nowhere to go - except To a WinceMob Treo - or more likely a Blackberry.
When a phone as relatively lame as the iPhone can eat Palm's lunch and dinner like it has, maybe the Motley Fool is just stating reality.
Paying my annual PDA update tax to Palm since 1997.
RE: NOVA
RE: NOVA
Read all about it: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
RE: NOVA
RE: NOVA
Paying my annual PDA update tax to Palm since 1997.
Is the Centro a GOOD THING or a BAD THING for Palm?
Disclaimer: I have ZERO interest in Palm stock, I was never fired from Handspring/Palm and I do not post a dozen messages a day to the Yahoo Palm message board bashing Palm.
W.r.t. Palm having sold a gajillion (well, 2 million into the pipeline) or so Centros - well, they appeared to have made either ZERO or VERY little profit from this el cheapo model. Every quarter Palm proudly announces a new record number of smartphone sales, even though losses keep increasing? The parasitic Centros must be a loss leader! Is the plan to sell each Centro at a loss and then make it up in volume? Gack!
A few questions for the fanboys, cultists and Palm-optimists from a Palm-pessimist:
1) How many potential sales of high-margin Treos have been lost to low-margin Centros? Are Treo fanboys bitter that the Centro kiddies get better, faster, more stable, better-supported software than the Treo faithful? "Hell hath no fury as a Treo fanboy scorned"
2) What is Palm's product mix w.r.t. numbers of Treos v. Centros v. PDAs v. Fooleos (OOPS!) sold each quarter? If I cared I would look this up for myself, but since I couldn't care LESS about Palm, I'm going to cleverly manipulate one of you into doing this for me to make me look good. Whatta game!
3) Is the plan for the Centro to use it to rescue the Palm name and generate buzz, or did Palm just lob the Centro over the wall, find out people are willing to buy a nearly-free smartphone that has no real competition (whatta shock!) and then desperately decide to run with it and hope no one notices the declining profits? Can Centro sales double if carriers start giving them away FOR FREE - using more subsidies from Palm, of course? What will Palm's revenue picture be like with no contribution from the high-margin Treos? Sheesh.
4) Now that the $300 iPhone has Changed The Game Forever, has Palm been forced to go back to the drawing board like Orange just did with pulling the plug on the ALP phone? Will Palm scrap its own Linux pipe dream and stick to low end Centros and high end Windows Mobile Treos while they wait for a buyout?
5) Now that the Asus Eee stole the Fooleo's thunder and Dell, HP smell blood and have jumped into these narrow-margined waters, will there ever be a Fooleo II?
6) What happened to ALP's Access? From Cobalt to Palm Linux to ALP, the pattern is emerging. $325 MILLION for PalmSource? Gack!
7) Could it be that we've seen ZERO leaks about Palm's Next Great Thing because there's nothing to leak?
"NOVA might just have turned ino a black hole that's about to suck Palm into oblivion."
Whatta game!
Be Careful Out There!
RE: Is the Centro a GOOD THING or a BAD THING for Palm?
Obsessed a little bit, huh?
Telling.
You appear to have made around 10% of the posts to Palminfocenter recently and somehow also manage to get the first post (ALWAYS NEGATIVE SPIN) in almost EVERY article that appears here. Someone should add up your posts and let everyone know how often you've made the first post to an article here. Do you sit around all day waiting for articles to show up so you can start bashing Palm? What did Palm/Handspring do to you that triggered this stalking behaviour?
Obsessed a little bit, huh?
Pathetic.
You say you don't use a Palm OS PDA or smartphone and don't trade Palm stock. Yet over the past several years you've made THOUSANDS of posts to Palminfocenter, TreoCentral, the Yahoo Pam stock message board, etc and have even been banned from Treocentral for trolling. How... ODD.
Obsessed a little bit, huh?
Psychotic.
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That article panning PALM was requested
As another aside, for YEARS TMF had Palm as a Stock Advisor Pick, meaning "Buy Buy Buy!" and only VERY recently dropped it from the list.
That is to say, a couple months ago or so they said "Yer DUHmb if yer not in this stock!" and today they say "Yer DUHmb if yer in this stock!".
Giggle.