Author: Annie Latham

The arrival of the Palm Pre Plus in the UK (Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Available Soon for O2 Customers in the UK ), buzz about HP’s first webOS tablet and the possibility of a HP webOS printer,  and more reviews of the Palm Pre Plus were the main topics talked about this week. There was also quite a bit of interest in the SIM unlock now being available for AT&T Palm Pre Plus.  And speaking of AT&T, we mentioned last week how the Pixi Plus will be available on June 6.  The big question is whether the next day, Steve Jobs will be unveiling the next generation iPhone at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference AND if AT&T will remain the exclusive carrier.

Let’s talk Palm…

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This week, with the arrival of the Palm Pre Plus at AT&T, webOS is now an option at all three of the major US mobile carriers (joining Sprint and Verizon Wireless).  Topics of discussion since the last edition include reviews of the AT&T Pre Plus, the mystery outage that hit the Palm App Catalog on Saturday, HP’s earnings, the pending arrival of the Pre Plus/Pixi Plus at O2 in the UK and the Pixi Plus at AT&T. Also, there was a Pre sighting… on Survivor (!?). So let’s talk Palm!

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Setting aside talk about potential buyers, a stock downgrade, a departing executive and a disappearing act at Radio Shack, there was some upbeat news for Palm.

On Tuesday, SFR and Palm announced Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus would be arriving soon in France: On 27 April on SFR’s online store (www.sfr.fr) and on 11 May in all SFR stores and in retail.

On Friday, Palm’s Developer Days kick off. You can see the agenda here. PreCentral will be there!

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Looks like everyone is off and running with the Bloomberg story stating that Palm is seeking bids for the company as early as this week. The news was attributed to "three people familiar with the situation."

That set the stock on fire… relatively speaking. After busting through the $6 mark, by close of business on Tuesday, it had eased back to $5.16.

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The Verizon price drop, AT&T Pre Plus unboxing and "April Gladness" topped the news since the last edition of Talkin’ Palm.

Go on and see the roundup of what’s happening in webOS land, after the break! 

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With baseball season about to start, guess it is okay to throw a change-up into the mix. Talkin’ Palm will still hit up the trends and the stuff we didn’t post, but we’ll be throwing in our favorite Tweets too. 

Since the last column, the shift has been from the earnings downer to another Palm Pre Plus victory in Laptop Magazine’s Smartphone Madness.  The other item that really made the rounds was the fan made ad .

 Let’s Talk Pre!

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Palm ended with week with momentum on the app and developer side of things (especially game developer). As for the stock, things are still grim. So let’s start with PALM news to get that out of the way.

CNBC – Jim Goldman: "Goldman wrote about the possibility of Palm being brought under Motorola’s wing:

"…Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that a Palm/Motorola tie-up would mount any kind of meaningful challenge to Apple and RIM."

"… But with strength in numbers and critical mass so important in the smart phone arena today, a Palm/Motorola team could at least get decidedly larger crumbs than the two separately are scrounging for today. Palm would do well with Motorola’s marketing muscle behind it, and Motorola’s Sanjay Jha could turn Palm into an operational contender rather than the stumbling wannabe it has been. Palm’s conference call in a couple of weeks when the company reports earnings should be an interesting event indeed."

Seems like there’s somebody suggesting Palm get purchased nearly every day. Still doesn’t make sense to us, though.

Let’s Talk Palm!

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Palm had a busy week with webOS v1.4 being rolled out to all carriers. That spawned a bunch of user created videos (one of the cool features of this new version).  There was also some air of excitement around games/apps. Sure, the financial picture was less than rosy. But the attitude now seems to be, "What? Me worry?"

So here’s a rundown of what went on this week in the world of Palm. Big thanks to Mike of balloongeek.com for the Pre image above!

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Ouch and Yea!… That’s the way the last week was for Palm. Ouch was the pummeling the PALM stock took as guidance was lowered and analysts speculated on what the true meaning was behind the numbers. Things got especially ugly when CNBC’s Jim Goldman reported that Palm management was not truthful about the reason why work was suspended at a Chinese manufacturing partner.

"Palm’s got a credibility problem, and it’s the kind of thing that seems so insidious, and so systemic, that it might pose a deep threat to the company’s ability to keep going. That’s because the number of people who believe what this company is saying seems to be dwindling."

Things are not looking good. At the end of the trading day on Friday, PALM was down to $6.09, which is perilously close to the company’s 52-week low ($5.85 on March 9, 2009).  Not a pretty picture.

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Mobile World Congress was crickets-ville for webOS news as the anticipated release of webOS Version 1.4 didn’t happen on Monday. Derek K had a nice post that explained how the webOS update process works (it garnered 160 comments!).

"Generally it takes a few weeks from Palm seeding the update to developers and carriers to when the update is released. Now, a few weeks is not any sort of guarantee for an update release, sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it happens faster. (As an ironic aside, February 15th was also a rumored launch date for the Palm Pre – in 2009. People got all worked up over Palm "missing" that date as well, when all that was promised was "first half of 2009.")

At the very least, we should still see webOS 1.4 in some form by the end of the month. Palm publicly promised that on stage at CES. There’s a reason we filed the leaked update under “rumors” and approached it with cautious optimism. It doesn’t always pan out. Take this to heart: webOS 1.4 is coming this month. Just not yesterday."

So with no Palm news to chase, Dieter Bohn did manage to get Adobe to show Flash working on webOS. Working… yes. Ready for prime time? Not quite.

Note:  Want to learn more about what happened at the Mobile World Congress? The Smartphone Experts team has done 3 podcasts.

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There was quite a bit of chatter this week covering reviews of the Pre Plus, reaction to the Verizon Pre Plus "Mom" ads, run-up to what may come at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and some PALM analyst movements. So let’s talk Palm!

Palm’s stock closed out the week at $9.99. There was a bit of uplifting news starting with Citi raising its rating to Hold from Sell. Another firm, Wedbush Morgan Securities initiated coverage of the shares with a Neutral rating and price target of $10.50.

The last bit of uplifting news was talk about the Pre possibly arriving at AT&T in May. Citibank’s analyst believes that more insight into carrier interest for Palm’s webOS devices may come out during the Mobile World Congress (Our own Dieter Bohn is attending and will be providing reports and insights).

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Super rumors drove Palm stock as high as $11.29 before closing out the week at $10:38. M&A potential said one analyst. Palm posted that they will be in South Beach for the Super Bowl.  Palm’s Jon Zilber wrote:

"Palm is taking part in a pre-game bash in Miami’s ultra ultra South Beach, where athletes and entertainment VIPs are joining forces to salute the USO’s role in supporting the U.S. Armed Services and honor a select group of service members attending the event. We’ll be showing off Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus at the event and are pleased to be providing webOS devices and service to the members of the military attending."

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