Analyst Predicts Palm Eos Delay

Posted By: Ryan Kairer Monday, August 17, 2009 1:36:25 PM

Morgan Joseph analyst Ilya Grozovsky has issued a new report that claims the long rumored Palm Eos/Pixie model may not be released this year as had been previously expected. This is the same analyst who just last week drafted a report on declining Pre sales at Sprint. The AllThingsD Digial Daily blog reprints some of the comments from the note with additional commentary:

"We think that the Pixie, which we believe is being geared for AT&T (T) and has a different form factor than the Pre, is not likely to be available for the 2009 holiday season, [...] We do not have significant unit assumptions for this product given the continued success of the iPhone at AT&T."

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Pixie/Eos Delay

Amroth @ 8/17/2009 2:10:26 PM #

Eos? The only relevant question for us all is, WHEN will Pre be @ VZW? Once Pre comes to VZW, Palm will go into the black AND I can get rid of my lame 755p!!!!!!!!!

It could be the 'delay' is permanent

SeldomVisitor @ 8/17/2009 2:19:32 PM #

The competition is not sitting still. A castrated Pre may be overpriced from the get-go. Rubinstein already has a history of canceling Palm projects.

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

jca666us @ 8/17/2009 3:02:02 PM #

Question for FreAk - with this "delay" - any thoughts when Foleo2 comes out?

lol!!!!

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

freakout @ 8/17/2009 4:15:37 PM #

SV:

The competition is not sitting still. A castrated Pre may be overpriced from the get-go. Rubinstein already has a history of canceling Palm projects.

The Eos is actually rather unique for its alleged form factor. The only other QWERTY candybars out there either run WinMob or the ancient Blackberry OS. Presuming it has the same basic hardware as the Pre (Wi-Fi, GPS, OMAP etc) I reckon it'd be a rather attractive proposition @ $99.

That said, I've always thought it was a bit strange for Palm to be launching a second phone so soon. I figured they'd want the more-expensive Pre to firmly establish itself as their "hero" phone first and give it at least a year on the market.

In the end, though, since this analyst is apparently pulling this out of his ass, I'd still consider that leaked AT&T slide to be more solid evidence. Hence, more likely that we will see Eos before the end of the year rather than not.

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

hkklife @ 8/17/2009 4:27:37 PM #

Aye, I could see some users (all other things equal) choosing the Eos over the Pre just due to the lack of a slider.

Of course, the delay may not be that terrible if Palm works to addresss the Pre's build quality woes and get a 16GB+ version to market. As SV said, the Pre is castrated enough as-is. The Eos will have to be quite cheap and/or have slightly better specs to make a substantial impact. Remember, we are anticipating an iPhone 3GS with 8GB arriving "soon" at the same $99 pricepoint (which should be a bloody battle this holiday season)

As badly as Palm needs SOMETHING else new ASAP, I'd almost rather see the Eos could arrive next year after WebOS & its app store have had time to mature a bit more and perhaps packing 8GB instead of 4GB.

Also, I'd still like to know how existing WebOS apps will deal with the Eos' screen that's reportedly a slightly lower resolution than the Pre. It might be in the best interests of Palm, developers, and users alike to keep the Eos on the backburner and give it a standard 320x480 resolution to keep from fragmenting their fledgling app base.
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: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

SeldomVisitor @ 8/17/2009 4:34:41 PM #

My assumption is that the Pre price will be dropped to $99 soon, thus leaving essentially $0 as the price that could be charged for a "cheaper" "castrated Pre".

That is to say, no money in it for Palm so maybe such a device has been canceled.

Of course, if everyone was wrong and the device is MORE expensive than the Pre then this entire comment thread is invalid.

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

freakout @ 8/17/2009 4:37:00 PM #

^^ I figure that this is where the HTML/CSS/JS approach to development will be a boon to Palm. Whereas hard-coded native apps generally need to be specifically developed with certain screen resolutions in mind, webOS apps should be able to dynamically resize themselves without much difficulty.

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

jca666us @ 8/17/2009 8:21:06 PM #

Freak,

As you said, "you figure" - you don't do software development for a living, do you?

Nothing in Mojo points to real support for resolution independence.

If any of these mythical dynamically resizable webOS apps. appear, they will need some recoding if they use any hard-coded images.

BTW Freak, are these the same magical apps. that will support full-featured high speed 3d gaming too?

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

jca666us @ 8/17/2009 8:36:38 PM #

>My assumption is that the Pre price will be dropped to $99 soon, thus leaving
>essentially $0 as the price that could be charged for a "cheaper" "castrated
>Pre".

If they sell the Pre for $99 to stimulate sales, they'll still need to offer a higher end model in order to generate profits (unless they're going to become a non-profit - LOL!).

If they're smart, it won't be a year until we see (at least) a 16 gig. Pre.

>That is to say, no money in it for Palm so maybe such a device has been
>canceled.

>Of course, if everyone was wrong and the device is MORE expensive than
>the Pre then this entire comment thread is invalid.

If the EOS (from the pics I've seen) retails for more than $99 when it's finally released, I'll be surprised.

If the Pre's sales are plummeting as they actually say, they can always rebrand it as the Palm EOL (End-Of-Life). :)

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

twrock @ 8/18/2009 1:51:55 AM #

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/6853/#152826

Yep, the dude must be dead on.

Hey Palm! Where's my PDA with Wifi and phone capabilities?

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

rpa @ 8/18/2009 7:51:40 PM #

Palm EOL....catchy. Since Palm only has the Pre to sell in the US thru Sprint and I read somewhere that the Treo Pro was EOL and the Centro has seen its day, what is Palm doing to produce revenue?

RE: It could be the 'delay' is permanent

hkklife @ 8/18/2009 11:36:36 PM #

Simple: smoke & mirrors and shell games. Palm's been doing this for years now.

I still maintain that they are setting the company up for acquisition. Streamline the product line down to perhaps a SINGLE model, have a much-hyped new OS, and still have their existing carrier agreements intact. There's gotta be someone out there still foolish enough to overpay!

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->?

In other hype...

loftwyr @ 8/17/2009 4:37:31 PM #

Ilya Grozovsky found out no-one had talked about him in over a week so he released a completely unsubstantiated announcement that Palm would not be buying Microsoft this quarter.

Mr. Grozovsky based his BS on the fact that Palm had not yet overtaken Nokia in sales of a future but yet unspecified device.

Blog commenters, already looking for something to complain about, grasped this "news" with both hands and claimed that they knew this was the end of Palm and that they knew everything. They went on to say "if Palm doesn't exactly follow in Apples footsteps, I'm never selling my iPhone to get one of their devices."

Palm shares were ambivalent on the news.

RE: In other hype...

freakout @ 8/17/2009 4:45:36 PM #

ROFLCOPTER
Tim
Treo 270 -> Treo 650 -> Treo 680 -> Centro

Please, no replies from jca666us.

RE: In other hype...

CFreymarc @ 8/17/2009 6:09:08 PM #

Publish a blog to spoof all these analysis "experts" that have never written a line of code in their life and sell add space! You have a winner here!

Huh?

surfmaniac @ 8/17/2009 8:03:59 PM #

Is this the genius who said short PALM to zero last Dec when it was at 3? Or the one who's been frontrunning the stock for all his insider friends? What a joke.