Hasta La Gadget!

It’s no secret that Palm’s Hail Mary of 2009 — webOS and the launch of the Pre — hasn’t been the rousing success that the company so desperately needed. Profitability is a distant dream, Verizon isn’t giving the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus the marketing support they need to rise to the top, some analysts suggest that the cash in the bank is only enough to last for another year or so, and the choice of Sprint as a long-term exclusive launch partner continues to be a pesky monkey on the back. All of these realities have led Palm to become a near-constant source of takeover speculation in recent months. Name a company — any company — and odds are they’ve been caught up in a rumor at one point or another: Nokia, Dell, RIM, Microsoft, Google, Nintendo (yes, Nintendo), the list goes on. Of course, not all of these deals would make much strategic sense, and only one — if any — will ultimately happen.

For its part, Palm boss Jon Rubinstein is as adamant as ever that the company intends to remain independent and swing to profitability, and as best as we can tell, he’s still got financier Elevation Partners’ support in that quest. But let’s suspend reality for a moment and assume an acquisition does happen; who’d be the best fit? We like HTC — we like HTC a lot, in fact. Let’s take a look at why.

Continue reading Editorial: HTC and Palm should get hitched and make beautiful babies

Editorial: HTC and Palm should get hitched and make beautiful babies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a rough month or so for Palm, as the only thing keeping the company’s tanking stock price from falling completely into the gutter are buyout rumors — RIM here, HTC there, even Lenovo, for some crazy reason. But that’s apparently not enough to get CEO Jon Rubinstein down: he just sat down with Fortune for a remarkably candid chat, saying that although his company hasn’t done so well, he still thinks there’s potential — and that he obviously wishes some things had gone better. The big one? The Verizon launch — and Jon thinks that if the Droid and Pre had had their launch dates flipped, the Pre would have done better.

One of the analysts on our earnings call asked if we had launched when Droid launched, and Droid launched when [we] launched at Verizon, would the story have been opposite? I said I think we have a better product than Droid, and customers would have been happier with it.

It’s certainly an interesting thought experiment, but we’ve always said that the Pre’s marketing had a lot to do with its failure on Big Red as well — and Palm apparently agrees, since it’s fired its ad agency and Jon told Fortune that Verizon’s changing their ads as well. As for the buyout rumors? Well, obviously Jon didn’t say much, but it sounds like he’s not too interested — although that can always change if the right suitor comes to the table . We’ll see if Ruby actually manages to turn things around — we’ve got some ideas on how to make that happen. Hit the source link for the full interview.

Palm’s Jon Rubinstein: ‘I think we have a better product than Droid’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time to get those speculative juices flowing again. Pre Central have unearthed the above O2 Germany promotional poster displaying a Palm Pixi stood in front of such smartphone luminaries as Sony Ericsson’s X10 and Motorola’s Milestone. Given that the Pixi has yet to make the hop over the Atlantic, their supposition is that we’re looking at its Plus variant and that this early flier is indicative of a soon-ish release for the Euro-bound Plus devices from Palm. Can we be any more specific than that? Why yes we can, thanks to Laurent Guyot, a French PR chap, who indicates an April 27th launch date for the Pre and Pixi Plus on the SFR network. Put as much trust into this info as you feel appropriate, though it does look like a resoundingly logical time to get these handsets out into eager European hands.

[Thanks, Garth]

Continue reading Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus could be coming to Europe by the end of this month

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus could be coming to Europe by the end of this month originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 03:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to a report from Advertising Age, Palm has mercifully, finally, really parted ways with its ad agency, Modernista — the house responsible for some of our least favorite ads ever. If you need a memory jog, here’s them telling the world that they loved creeping people out with Palm ads. The AdAge article says that the company is currently in talks with various other ad shops, though there’s no clear word on who that new team will be, or when we’ll see the fruits of their labor. We don’t have much to add to this in commentary except to say that this is probably the second smartest thing Palm has done in a span of seven days — the first was striking that amazing deal on Verizon for a super-cheap Palm Pre Plus along with free Mobile Hotspot service. Now, we can look forward to a future where our children won’t cower in fear when they see a Palm ad on television, and we can sleep at night without the image of that pale woman burned into our minds. Of course, now that we’ve seen it, we can never un-see it.

Palm splits with ad agency Modernista originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like AT&T will start taking delivery tomorrow of Pre Plus units that are being specifically designated as high-security, SKU-less “practice devices” that are only to be used off the sales floor for training purposes, though when training is complete, they can be moved to a live store display. That certainly lends weight to a launch happening sooner rather than later, counter to rumors earlier in the month that we might not see them on shelves until the peak of Summer. Of course, we don’t know how long the training sessions are going to run — our leak here gives no indication of that, nor of a retail release date — but considering that we first saw this form factor back in January of ’09, it’s seriously in everyone’s best interest to fast-track these. Our fingers are crossed.

[Thanks, Eric L.]

AT&T getting ‘practice’ Pre Pluses tomorrow? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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