Mar 19
This is getting depressing. As expected, Palm warned again that revenue for the current quarter will fall far below Wall Street’s expectations, Reuters reports.
The Palm Pre and Pixi aren’t selling as well as Palm had hoped, even after introducing (slightly) upgraded versions for Verizon Wireless, to sell alongside the original models on Sprint.
The main problem appears to be inventory: Palm shipped 960,000 smartphones last quarter, but only sold about 408,000 units instead of the 600,000+ many analysts expected. That leaves Palm with tons of aging inventory sitting in stores, which means greater discounts, more sales, and less profit just to move the remaining units.
This casts a pall over Palm’s future prospects once again, after the struggling company delighted tech enthusiasts by introducing the long-awaited, excellent webOS in January 2009.
Will Palm ever get it together? For more, read PCMag editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff’s latest column.
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