Palm Stock Rallies on Strong Treo Sales
Palm's stock today rose 7% to close at 34.59 on an analyst upgrade. A Needham & Co. analyst said sales of the company's Treo smartphones appear to be outpacing previous expectations.
A report on CBS Marketwatch states that the company's backlog of firm orders for its signature smartphone stood at $214 million at the end of its last fiscal year to May. That equates to around 450,000 units.
The analyst also comments on speculation about the Windows Mobile Treo. He expects the company could launch such a device by the first quarter of 2006 or sooner, which agrees with earlier reports.
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RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
It's all baked into the cake. Now go do your homework, moron.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
--
http://arpx.net/docs/top_10_palmos_applications - my top 10 palm apps.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=PSRC&t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=palm
Of course TVoR will attribute this to unspecified rumors that PalmSource is about to be acquired--which may very well be true but pardon me if I have my doubts that he'd be the one to know!
Then there is Gekko who seems to think that anyone who doesn't believe the Palm OS is dust in the wind is manipulating PSRC stock simply by posting here. Would that it were true.
There certainly seems to be something going on with PSRC shares jumping almost 50% since Aug 19.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
Yes, I used to think that too. That was before I lost more money on the stock exchange than I care to admit. (Next time you hear the expression 'a fool and his money ...' you should think of me.) This story is just spin produced by a broker who is looking to generate commissions - they are trying to sell on the basis of a good story, not on fundamentals. To repeat, if you buy stock on the basis of future projections of expected earnings, you WILL suffer losses.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=PSRC
After seeing PSRC shares rise so sharply I just started looking closer at that Aug 17 annual report. Since the jump comes on the heels of that report (http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050817/psrc10-k.html) I'd be curious to know what people think was in there that prompted all the interest on the street.
One thing that caught my eye this time: the report refers to "new licensees" in the plural. This reminded me that when I talked with John Cook at PalmSource last month he said that LG's announcement was theirs, not PalmSource's, implying that PalmSource doesn't get to automatically announce when they get a new licensee. It seems likely to me now that the use of the phrase "new licensees" wasn't a mistake and that there is at least one other that hasn't been announced.
I wonder who that might be.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
=============
But the "news" that PALM may be developing a uSoft-OS device certainly isn't news to anyone who visited that uSoft "Mobil" web site and viewed the slide show containing NUMEROUS obviously-PALM devices all displaying uSoft-OS screens.
Weeks ago, minimally.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
beersie - leveraged stock option compensation is not uncommon for cash-strapped companies. stop grasping at straws you overly optimistic silly fool. you're the last guy i'd want watching my back in a conflict - your rose-colored glasses blind you. stick to programming.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
leveraged stock option compensation is not uncommon for cash-strapped companies. stop grasping at straws you overly optimistic silly fool.
I see. So apparently you preferred the situation where the PalmSource execs had obscene salaries and no accountability for the performance of the company they were leading.
You know, if you had read my post you would have realized that I wasn't making a case for optimism with the question about the stock options and the recent run-up. In fact, it seems to me that given the lack of any really good news in the latest filings from PSRC the best explanation for the run-up is that some people really were gambling that PalmSource would be acquired. Personally, that concerns me and as I said in the post I was curious about what other people made of it.
You've always been rude, Gekko, but I don't remember in the past that you were so feverish in your axe-grinding that you couldn't (or wouldn't) read what others were saying. Normally that kind of mindless frothing has been TVoR's specialty. Don't get all shaky on us, man.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
The article clearly states the rally is due to an analyst upgrade related to *current* sales. No need for guesswork or crazy speculation. I don't need to sink to his pitiful name-calling level to power this point home: geeko is *wrong*. Ha. Go Palm. :D
> "Anybody who buys stock on the basis of projections of expected profits will, sooner or later, burn all his money"
The only rational reason for a stock to have a price is expectations of future profits. Sorry you got burned, but you're not correct here
PS: Did I mention geeko is wrong? :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
Actually, your statement is entirely irrational. I refer you to Graham & Dodd's text entitled 'Security Analysis' - you can still get the 1934 edition in good bookshops (because it is the classic text on investments).
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
Having worked as an Investment Banker in New York I can assure you you really are wrong. I'll explain in small words:
There are two main ways to price an asset:
(1) The irrational way: "How much are other people willing to pay?" This can lead to bubbles, irrational exuberance, crashes. Etc.
(2) The rational way: "What is the sum of free cash flows this asset generate in the future, discounted by some appropriate cost of capital".
Ergo, the *rational* way of pricing is to price future free cash flows (i.e. EBITDA adjusted for working capital delta, capex, interest and tax)
I'm glad I could help. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
as a millionaire, i can tell you that the market is not always rational. thanks anyway, has-been.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
Maybe he's been busy stocking up on spare Clie parts as he prepares for the inevitable...
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come." It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
Expressing a concept mathematically does not prove its validity. I could spend a lot of time giving you a lecture on each of the errors in this statement, but life is too short for that. The fundamental point is this - anyone who claims to be able to predict the earnings of a company next year (let alone 5 years from now), with any degree of certainty, is either a fool or a liar.
RE: The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
Gotta love it
Can you even imagine how much $$$ micro$uck has dropped on the PDA/smartphone platform??? Billions. Multiples of what palm has invested over the years. And yet Palm still owns the space. And even worse for the losing platform, the Palm-on-Linux initiative is poised to reduce win-mob to a niche platform...
Gotta love being right! :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Gotta love it
Microsoft has never cared enough about their handheld division to drop billions on it. To the best of my knowledge they haven't even lost more than a few hundred million on it.
As for PalmLinux, you're talking about an unfinished platform that might be delivered in a year or two like it's a guaranteed win. Even if PalmLinux is everything it could possibly be, it would take many years to regain the marketshare that Palm has lost to Microsoft, if it's at all possible.
Last but not least, you're mixing up Palm, the company, and Palm, the platform. This article is talking about strong sales of the Treo hardware. It has little to nothing to do with Palm, the platform, nor PalmLinux or any other efforts of PalmSource. If you think that it depicts strength on the part of PSRC, I'd encourage you to check their stock price, and their profitability.
RE: Gotta love it
RE: Gotta love it
Not that I don't agree with you in palm & linux being better, but I would hardly call Windows Mobile marginal...
--
http://arpx.net/docs/top_10_palmos_applications - my top 10 palm apps.
RE: Gotta love it
I agree that the Palm platform has a chance to do very well riding on the back of Linux, which will enable a wider variety of devices than Windows Mobile can support and faster innovation. But WM devices will be popular with a lot of users (and vendors) for the foreseeable future just because they are Microsoft.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Gotta love it
Cobalt is DOA. Garnet has been stretcehd beyond the breaking point and THEN SOME. PoL is still, AT BEST, 18+ months away from appearing in a shipping device on retail shelves.
All of the licensees, major, minor, or otherwise have fled the platform. LG is an impressive name but until they actually ship a device AND a carrier agrees to offer that device, it's just V-A-P-O-R.
The only hope for Palm's salvation lies in a three-pronged approach:
1. Cobble FrankenGarnet into what it was two years ago-fast, (mostly) stable and good for midrange to low-end devices. In this area, Palm will need to really ensure they are shipping bug-free, stable, and reliable devices ($300 price point and below). Hopefully some work rewriting the pieces of Garnet "borrowed from Cobalt" that have proved to be rather unstable has already been done behind the scenes at Palm.
2. Someone needs to take a chance and launch a Cobalt device. Whether it's a Treo 700, GroupSense or LG, it would at least get people talking and create a buzz---again, good, bad, or otherwise--around the platform. The circle the wagons mentality has been on display far too long at Palm since Sony bailed. If Cobalt was released in a stable form at some point in '06, it'd be good enough as a transitional OS for the next 1/2 years.
It could even end up that Cobalt could be the bastion of cheap Asian smartphones whole PoL debuts on Treo/LifeDrive style devices. Garnet could conveivable exist ad infinitum on $100 style devices.
3. Palm needs to pay better attention to quality and offer more compelling hardware designs. 'Nuff said. While they are at, get the Athena connector on EVERY device (regardless of price point). Also, one or two styli sizes/shapes MAX need to be standard across the line--retailers don't have the shelf space to devote to scads of Pam-branded peripherals. I personally like the LD/Tungsten boing boing stylus and the metal Treo stylus.
Also on the hardware front, as TVoR and I have maintained for a long time now, the miserable Treo 600 needs to be put out of its misery ASAP and a decent low-end unit needs to be launched SANS keypad.
4. If the above Cobalt strategy doesn't materialize, then WinMob needs to be introduced (as much as I hate to say it) on a Treo. WinMob needs to REMAIN on Treos and those units need to differentiate a bit from POS Treos (square buttons & corners, anyone?) in order to keep retail confusion from running rampant (it'll happen anyway). Palm also needs to try and practice moderate strongarm techniques with the carriers, lest they all pick the Windows Treo over the Palm version. Palm could even introduce "neat" new features such as wi-fi, 2mp camera, built-in 521mb flash drives etc on the POS version *first*, then trickle those features down to the WinMob version later.
"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" could be retooled into "No one ever got fired for buying a Windows Treo but people who gotta have the latest & greatest get the POS version". This mantra could become ESPECIALLY important once PoL ships and the hardware won't be constrained by a wheezing old OS (make way for the LifeDrive Treo hybrid Hawkins envisioned!)
RE: Gotta love it
2. Cobalt is dead for a reason - it's garbage. Taking a half-azzed chance on it now would only cause more problems. "Sometimes dead is better."
3. The treo 650 and LD are quality built hardware. The keypad is the future - graffiti is dead.
4. The WinMob Treo is coming. Businesses want it. Wall Street wants it. And they shall get it!
5. The PDA is dead. Smartphones are the future.
RE: Gotta love it
Treo 650 & LD are quality hardware in the physical build quality sense but Palm still skimped on RAM on both devices. Now the T7 looks to skimp on CPU speed/battery size. I personally prefer Graffiti 1 but since that seems like it's gone for good, we might as well adopt keypads instead of the miserable abominations that are Graffiti 2/Jot.
Ditto about businesses & the Street wanting a WinMob Treo. Question is: Will it fill Palm's coffers in the short term but undermine the entire brand/rest of the lineup/remaining Palm OS user base in the long term? They've GOT to somehow keep Palm's identity intact and maintain a modicum amount of distance between the two devices and their respective OS's. Yes, it might not matter much when Joe six-pack makes his initial purchase but if he buys a piece of software for the wrong OS down the road, he'll get p***ed and not purchase another Treo when his contract is up.
I'd say it's more like "connected devices" are the future. There will always be a market for people who gotta have the latest tech for phones and/or want to upgrade PDAs frequently without having to pay early termination fees. I think the PDA market will consolidate to more "basic" traditional PDA devices clustered in the $200 and below range (T|E variants). The rest of the market will be served by devices like the LD (in theory)/Archos/video iPod that play all types of media and have rudimentary PIM functions, smartphones, and tablets.
In theory, Palm could have a $100 Zire, a $200 Tungsten, an improved $400ish LifeDrive and two or three Treos @ various price points and be just fine.
*sigh*
First we have the abandoned PDA-only market. Palm, having saturated the customer base so that everyone who already knows they want a PDA-only has one now, has stopped advertising them and stopped putting decent R&D into them. Basically telling these people: "There, you got your PDA, now hush while we move on and reap money elsewhere." The existing PDA crowd... you know, that tiny little group that propelled Palm into dominant status before things like the Treo even existed... are left with aging technology and out in the cold as far as technological advances. Every PDA-only since the T3 has been a token effort, horribly botched and with ridiculous and inexplicable compromises, and full of bugs. Those wanting a QUALITY PDA-only are left wanting...
Then, we have the 800lb "Me Too!" gorilla, having entered the scene and doing what they do best: taking over not by the quality of their products, but leveraging their pre-existing monopolies elsewhere. How many businesses standardized on Windows Mobile PDAs for no other reason than "it runs Microsoft"?
The momentum and inertia in-place, we see the inevitble story play over yet again but this time in the PDA market. Look how the Garmin iQue, originally a flagship PalmOS licensee and some top-notch hardware, now has abandoned Palm and is running Windows Mobile.
Then the nail in the coffin: Palm themselves ceding defeat, and sticking a Microsoft OS on their own hardware. While Palm might be able to justify it and write it down, the damage will be done... in the mind of the consumers, Palm has waved the white flag, and what remaining marketshare Palm still has will be eroded even more quickly than it had been before. Why should they go with PalmOS when Palm isn't even going with it anymore?
I'm depressed. I truly am.
RE: *sigh*
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com
*NEW* Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
Same old news?
http://news.com.com/PalmSource+takes+hit+on+investment+report/2100-1045_3-5435211.html
RE: Same old news?
RE: Same old news?
I am glad to see that strong Treo 650 sales is giving Palm maneuvering power. The next step is to use all that great know-how put into the 650 and put it into the handheld line. The T5 is arguably one of the best handheld's ever made. However, it misses features that were in the T3 (vib alarm, mic, front speaker, faster grafiti, LEDs, etc). This was a big mistake and is probably undermining T5 sales. The LD lag is also probably crippling sales and/or increasing returns or setting in customer discontent that results in a higher propense of buying a PPC. Palm has the technology and the know-how to make a great T7 and LD2; DO IT! The current T7 rumours are that it will be 312mhz. If true, this will be yet another blunder by Palm. This is inexusable. If they felt that 400mhz on a WiFi device would use too much power, they should simply offer an under-clocking program. The T7 also has to bring back all of the missing T3 features while keeping the T5 design. PDAs are not dead or dying, consumers are merely waiting for a great exciting product at a decent price. Not everyone needs a cell phone with a limited 320x320 screen and an expensive monthly voice and data plan.
After the purchase of PalmSource, Palm has to consider using their traditional black and white Palm logo. The point of buying back the name and aquiring PalmSource is to consolidate (or "leverage" like the corp. jargon some like to use) a known brand name. PalmOne has hurt that brand significantly and the new hideous honkin orange Palm logo is simply no good. I don't care if it was designed by an ARTIST that also make the Pepsi or Coke logos (or something); the new logo is not professional and it should die.
On a final note, I estimate that if Palm makes a WM Treo, it will undermine their current monopoly Palm market. Palm will end up seeing all of its Palm OS base being split up among the 4 or 5 major PPC vendors. Palm is about to takes its Palm OS pie and starting splitting it with everyone. If Palm feels so strongly about penetrating the WM market, they should sell the Treo under another company name. Ideally, even without both the Palm and Treo names. Same as Kraft cheese sells cheaper cheese slices under the guise of another brand name. Anyways, best avoid WM because Palm risks spreading itself thin and risks taking its eye of the Palm OS ball, which is after all, their cash cow.
In summary, 1) merger 2) traditional Palm logo 3) WM Treo under another company name 4) improve T7
Cobalt should be released this fall because PoL will take too long. Gekko says it sucks, from what I read on palmsource.com, OS 6 is a formidable new OS built the ground up. The APIs used will be the same in PoL and programmers won't have to rewrite their program, so what is the problem?
Would it be insider trading
Palm m125 December 25, 2003 to March 24 2004 > palmOne Zire 71 March 24, 2004 to March 31, 2005. Tapwave Zodiac 1 April 18, 2005 to present.
RE: Same old news?
Muddling nothing: Palm owns Treo. Please try to keep up. :)
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"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
RE: Same old news?
Well, duh. But Palm does not own Palm OS, and they're not developing PalmLinux.
And next time, you might try posting on the right thread.
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The Windows Mobile Treo is Coming...
And Wall Street likes it!