Once the purveyor of the world ’s most successful handheld devices , Palm has come up itself in dreaded straits this week after an announcement that the company would not meet the financial guidance it had provided to Wall Street investors . The remainder was attributed to lower than expected sale of its webOS - based smartphones like the Palm Pre .
That ’s not enough to get Palm CEO and chairman Jon Rubinstein down , though . The former Apple executiveissued a missive to the troops , discuss what step the society was strike to help decline its form . Top on the list were strengthening the company ’s relationship with Verizon Wireless by educate sales people and wage in a more widespread advertizement effort .
How did Palm find oneself itself in hot water ? While the company had made other strides in the smartphone scene of action with its Treo line of products of phones , its PalmOS had maturate poorly — so much so that the ship’s company even started selling handsets powered by Windows Mobile . In an attempt to revitalise the company , it pop work on a unexampled operating system dubbed webOS , which it debuted on the Palm Pre at CES in 2009 . The introduction was impressive and spawned talk of the town of Palm as a desirable competitor to Apple . The Pre did n’t go on sales agreement until June 2009 , and our own review hold it a respectable launching in the food market , though not without its flaws .
Unfortunately , the webOS platform was strangle by limited availability of the SDK for third - party developer , which put it in a tight smudge when competing against Apple ’s class headstart in the app market — a fact that Apple VP Phil Schiller did n’t pause to poke fun at in the companionship ’s WWDC keynote . In add-on , Palm also made the mistake of trying to piggyback its way onto Apple ’s iTunes computer software for media syncing capability . The move may have earned Palm plenty of public press , but ultimately the company found itself on the losing end of the ping - niff match .
Six month of exclusivity with Sprint did n’t needs help Palm ’s grammatical case either , especially once word began to leak out that the speech sound was expected to make its manner to the much more popular Verizon internet in other 2010 . Those leaks took the breaking wind out of the sails of Palm ’s CES 2010 press conference , turning what should have been a major strategic announcement into a foregone conclusion .
However , even update role model of its handsets on Verizon have n’t been enough to pad Palm ’s sale to the extent that it had hoped . The company say on Thursday that its financial yr taxation would be “ well below ” the $ 1.6 to $ 1.8 billion that it had auspicate and expected tax income of $ 300 to $ 320 million in the current poop .
There ’s no doubtfulness that it ’s tardily in the game and Palm ’s down several runs , but oftentimes a squad plays better when they ’re behind — there ’s nothing people like more than a counter . Some have move so far as towildly theorizethat Palm ’s spot and its roll of former Apple employees forecast ill for the team from Cupertino in a future without Steve Jobs . But you ’ve also have to intromit that , of all people , ex - Apple folk know how to be the scrappy underdog .
