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Posted
Aug 20 2008, 12:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The New York Times checks in with Palm, whose stock price has plummeted 90% since 2000 to $7.77 today. Its share of the smartphone market has fallen by half in two years to 17%.
Palm announced the new Treo Pro smartphone today for business users. It's also been busy hiring people from companies like Apple and Microsoft. And it has a significant change ahead: Next year, it will unveil brand-new software and a new device, all designed for heavy Web and data use.
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Posted
Jun 27 2008, 10:06 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Palm shares are sinking like a stone today after the company reported disappointing losses and sales in its fourth quarter. Analysts had expected the company to do better, and the report leaves questions about Palm's survivability against competition like Apple and Research in Motion. Palm shares have been down about 10% all morning, and have dropped 64% in the last year. Wait, isn't Palm's Centro a big hit? Yes, the company has sold more than 1 million of them since launch. But that success isn't helping Palm's bottom line because the $99 Centro has lower margins than other phones like the Treo. Think of the Centro as Palm's long-term investment in entry-level smartphone users (some 70% of Centro buyers have never owned a smartphone before).
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Posted
Mar 17 2008, 12:19 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Palm's cute Centro phone is a hit, but that caused shares to fall today. Citi analyst Jim Suva wonders if the $100 Centro is selling a little too well, to the point where it's cutting into margins. Palm reports earnings Thursday, and Suva thinks the company will miss analyst estimates and stop providing guidance.
That's some pretty bold predicting by Suva. We'll see how close he is to the mark later this week. (Analysts are expecting $315.3 milion in revenue and a 14-cent loss). Palm shares fell today but climbed back in afternoon trading to just under $5.
The question -- and it's a valid one -- is whether the Centro is snagging buyers who otherwise might have picked up the higher-margin Treo. Of course, the other side of this is whether the Centro is snagging buyers who otherwise might have gone for an iPhone or Blackberry. Palm's subsidizing the Centro partly in hopes of getting new data users, and internal research shows that 72% of Centro buyers previously used a traditional handset and not a smartphone.
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Posted
Mar 06 2008, 12:11 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A friend of mine was thrilled to get an Apple iPhone for Christmas from his wife. But he returned it a few weeks later. Why? Because he couldn't access his work e-mail on the device. The iPhone, for all its cool features, lacked one essential tool: the ability to sync easily with corporate e-mail on the Microsoft Exchange server.
How many times has this story been repeated? That's why today's news from Apple is huge. The company said it will work with Microsoft to license the ActiveSync synchronization program, which lets iPhone users get e-mail, contacts and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange servers. It sounds like this could happen sometime in the summer.
The move means Apple is going after Research in Motion's ubiquitous BlackBerry in the corporate market. But this isn't a death knell for Research in Motion, which has a huge lock on enterprise customers. RIM had a 73% market share for smartphones in February, according to ChangeWave Research. Palm's market share has declined over the past year to 18%, and Apple's iPhone is around 5%.
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Posted
Feb 21 2008, 12:30 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This could be a turnaround year for struggling Palm, and all because of three letters: GSM. The beleaguered smartphone maker already got a boost in the arm four months ago when its new Centro smartphone became an overnight success. But the $100 Centro was exclusively made for Sprint, and that meant it could only be used in the U.S. on Sprint's CDMA network. That exclusive contract has ended, allowing Palm to take the Centro to other carriers. AT&T jumped at the chance, and this week, both companies announced a new Centro that runs on AT&T's Edge network, which uses GSM technology. That's significant because GSM is the global standard for wireless phones -- 86% of the world's wireless subscribers use it, according to AT&T. The new Centro can place calls in nearly 200 countries.
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Posted
Feb 07 2008, 12:45 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Handset companies who do business in North America will be hit hard in a recession, Citi analyst Jim Suva said in a note this morning. Suva takes a close look at Brightpoint, Motorola, Palm and Research in Motion, and calls out the latter as the stock that could "see the greatest damage to share price." Suva writes that Research in Motion "faces double-barreled risk," according to Barron's, because of its strong presence in North America and its high P/E multiple (currently at 45.20). The stock could drop to $63 in a worst-case, global recession. RIMM shares closed today at $84.68. Embattled Palm is very exposed in North America, and Suva thinks a recession could push shares down to $3 or $4 a share. Palm closed today at $5.99.
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