Palm, Inc. (PALM)

Too many competitors and PALM just doesn't have the traction.

Not even close to an iPhone killer. Google's Android platform and the dazzling range of different handsets will eat up the rest of the market. Nokia will probably stick with Symbian for too long, before throwing in the towel and going Android. It's like the PC wars of the 80's replayed on your mobile device. Wicked flashback.

Where was I? Oh Palm who? WebOS what? Their plans for the developers kit is too late - it should be out by now. SDK FAIL. Also their App store approval process seems non-existant. Some developers are complaining their new weather and calculator web apps have been in processing for waaaay too long.

Goldman Sux can only keep their stock price so high for so long... until we're back where we were 12 months ago.

These guys are still around? LoL! What a joke!

Too much competition from Android, iPhone, and RIMM. How do you compete with the free Android.

I expect PALM to get a short-term technical bounce at about $10, brief support at the mid-May low, and then bounce to the 200-day avg near $12. The CMF(20) and CMF(10) show distribution is not only strong, but the intensity of the selling pressure is building each day. RSI(14), RSI(7) and even RSI(2) are still in the 20s, and volume isn't too exciting, so it's not a stampede to the exits--yet. Once PALM does get a bounce back to the 200-day I anticipate we'll see a rout follow. Of course the fundamentals are dreadful and they've missed Santa's sleigh (the boat) for Xmas. I might take another look at PALM once it nears $6.

Palm is a classic example of too little, too late. Its WebOS is great. But so is Android, iPhone OS, Windows Mobile and even RIMM's OS. WebOS has some advantages (multitasking for example) but that isn't going to be enough to convince a critical mass of people to (a) buy into a new OS thereby abandoning whatever OS they have been using, and (b) buy into a failing wireless data operator (Sprint). Palm - put a fork in it, you are done!

Palm just can't compete with Google- or Apple in making a quality smartphone that'll have quality apps. Apple may have the best marketing and phone - but google's onslaught will be a good challenge.

Do they make anything anyone cares about?

I still believe that they simply don't have the financial resources to take on already established players like Nokia, Samsung, Apple, and Research IN Motion over the long haul.

It wasn't that long ago that Palm was the darling of the jet-set, and soon after, everyone who wanted a do-it-all personal organising device. And not soon after that, "Palm" became synonymous with "PDA", as in, "load your calendar on your Palm or Palm device..."

What happened since then?

Perhaps the most telling sign of Palm's troubles is the launch of the Pre. Much-heralded and much-expected, especially by Palm tifosi (who remember the good old days, and might even still have been using a Treo device), the Pre seems to have landed without much fanfare. Has Palm even separated out Pre sales from the rest of its device sales tally? Last I heard was no.

The Android market is gearing up and ready to put Palm in even more dire straits. Make no mistake: Android is going to be the Windows of the smart phone market. Aside from large enterprise environments which have already made giant commitments to Blackberry or MSFT software, Android is a free, open-source alternative which will revolutionise the smartphone market.

Making Sprint the launch partner for Pre, given all this, seems like a suicide pact: a former pack leader now reduced to marketing through the sickliest of the major NA carriers.

Palm hires great designers and great programmers. Let's hope that management can capitalise on their proven track record and turn things around, but for now, as the saying goes, this dog won't hunt.

Nothing but hope. No way it will take any meaningful market shares from i-Phone.

Fundamentals are bound to catch up with this stock eventually....

There was hype that DELL was supposed to buy these guys and for the longest it drove the shareprice through the roof. Now that Dell is bidding for $3.9B for Perot and they already bought Glasshouse, it's hard to say what happened on with the rumored acquisition of Palm. In any case this is overvalued on it's own and Dell would go into negative equity if it tried to buy Palm at current market cap. (although they have enough cash to do it) Either way Palm was a much better deal when it was overvalued at $8, now that it is overvalued at $16 there shouldn't be any upside left. Although, I wouldn't short it.

I don't think this company will exist (at least not as a standalone) in three years. No one I know uses a Palm. They have been leap-frogged by RIMM And AAPL competition. Pre is a catch-up attempt and too little too late.

$330 secodnary offering just to keep the lights on will buy time- but for what reason? What investor would really put money into this company? If there is a 5% chance to double or triple your investment, but a 45% chance of no gain and a 50% chance of total loss that does not work out to a very good outcome. That is what I see with PALM. Longs will need more than luck with this one.

Palm MAY save itself by debuting some incredible products with great marketing, but it's a longshot and I'd be comfortable saying they won't. It was a great company and I loved my Palm when I had it 8 years ago, but the last person I know that owned a Palm just traded it in for a Blackberry... even though he liked the Palm more.

I have a Palm Pre myself and think it's great. The webOS is also very polished and hold's great future promise. However, the stock has gotten ahead of itself and I don't see it being a market beater for a year or so.

In four year, this company wont exist anymore.

This stock has run up on overblown speculation IMO. Just a gut play.

The company we know today as Palm started out as Palm Computing, making software for HP and Apple handhelds. They launched their own branded hardware (made by 3rd-parties), then were bought by USRobotics. USR merged into 3Com a few years later, which is when all the original Palm Computing people bailed and started Handspring. 3Com spun Palm off as a separate company, which then bought the assets of bankrupt Be, Inc. and split its operating system and hardware divisions into two legally separate companies. The hardware division then bought Handspring (or was bought by them?) and operated under the PalmOne name for a while. The software division was called PalmSource, and it went nowhere - PalmSource merged into another unrelated company and sold the Palm trademark back to PalmOne, which then renamed itself Palm. Again.

But through all that, one thing has remained the same: a company promising way more than it can can deliver. They either promise features and capabilities the hardware/software can't quite do, or they develop good hardware and then can't manage to make enough of them to generate a profit before it becomes outdated.

Five or six name changes in 16 years, a half-dozen logos, and business plan shifts from selling software only, proprietary software with outsourced hardware, proprietary software with in-house hardware, in-house hardware with outsourced software, and now back to proprietary hardware with proprietary software for mobile phone carriers. And along the way their competitors have grown numerous, strong, and profitable.

The stock has gone up over 400% in less than a year based on little more than anticipation and rumors of better products to come, but I don't buy it one bit. All they need to make this fish story complete is a corporate headquarters in Belarus or Jamaica and an OTC- or BB-traded stock.