Author: Derek Kessler

Today both Vivek Arya of Merrill Lynch and Phil Cusick of Macquarie Research downgraded their analytic opinions of Palm, with Arya moving Palm into the sell column, while Cusick took a more cautionary approach and advised not buying any more shares. What worries investors, however, is the reasoning behind their downgrades: sales of the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus at Verizon have been less than stellar so far (though we do admit it is rather early in Palm’s life on Big Red).

While sales of the Pre on Sprint were okay, they were clearly less than what Sprint CEO Dan Hesse had hoped. And the Pixi, well, how many Palm Pixi phones have you spotted in the wild? Verizon, meanwhile, is fresh off the launch of the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris. From reports in our forums and the word of Arya, Verizon employees are pushing those handsets over the exclusive Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. All that in spite of the large marketing push from both Verizon and Palm.

The news has pummeled Palm’s stock, with shares down a painful 9.99% for just Tuesday, while the NASDAQ technology index dropped 1.28%. So far through February shares of Palm are down more than 21%; and down nearly 55% since hitting a high of $18.19 just five months ago. As a company, Palm is now worth $2.51 billion less than it was at the end of September, which is not so great when that leaves your value (including Elevation Partners’ 1/3 stake) at $2.08 billion.

The only way for Palm’s stock to hope to recover from this decline is for sales at Verizon to be spectacularly better than expected. While most Palm users don’t care about the stock price, it does matter. A higher stock price is indicative of investor confidence in Palm, and while some may think Palm stock isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, investors and analysts do still seem to have some expectations for the company. Just not lofty ones. That lower stock price makes a takeover a much more appetizing prospect for any company looking to expand their mobile offerings or jump into the market. For stable companies like Apple or Microsoft, the stock price matters very little. For a company on increasingly shaky ground like Palm, every little thing matters – the value of their stock included.

Currently lodged in the Palm Beta Apps feed is an app that will be of particular interest to webOS developers: My webOS Apps, from developer Shane O’Sullivan of Chofter.com. The free-while-in-beta app logs into your Palm developer profile and serves as a portal to the developer site. Not only can you check the status of your app submissions, you can also view graphs of your real downloads (no update downloads) over time and set up auto-tweet function for when your apps are approved. Check out the video above for a demonstration of how it all works – for the developer-on-the-go it doesn’t get much better than this!

It wasn’t that long ago that Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya was all gung-ho about Palm, placing the stock in the buy column with a $20 price target. But Arya’s optimism seems to have faded, and he has not only moved Palm into the underperform (i.e. sell) column, but has slashed the price target in half to just $10 a share.

While Arya believes that Palm’s webOS is better than most mobile operating systems, he said that “Palm’s superior platform features have not translated into sufficient carrier support and consumer demand, and we are concerned the window of opportunity may be closing as Google’s Android ecosystem gains ground, {Research In Motion] revitalizes its portfolio, iPhone increases its presence, and as Microsoft reboots its efforts with Windows Phone 7.” Additionally, he is concerned by Palm’s cash resources – at the end of the last quarter Palm had just $590 million on hand – money that Palm is burning through incredibly fast.

Arya has also noted something that we have heard a lot of: while Verizon staffers are generally knowledgeable about the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus that their stores carry, they are tending to push the Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris, and BlackBerry devices over the newer Palm smartphones. Even if Palm manages to add AT&T and T-Mobile to their carrier partners list, Arya doesn’t expect a significant boost in unit sales. With all that in mind, he has cut his prediction of how many units Palm will move in the coming quarter to 900,000 (down from the 1.1 million previously expected). Arya doesn’t expect Q4 to be much better for Palm, anticipating 1.2 million units shipped in the quarter, a cut of 300,000 from previous estimates.

There is one positive note, and it’s that the heavy advertising campaign that Palm has put on seems to be paying off with stronger sell-through (presumably at Sprint and Verizon stores). But amongst all this doom and gloom, it’s just a glimmer of hope as the expensive campaign is being supported by Palm’s diminishing cash pile.

Read: Barron’s

With a new update to webOS right around the corner (we hope), the app updates are coming hot and heavy. But updates aren’t all we’re getting – new apps are a staple here as well. While there’s the usual cruft, there are plenty of fun and useful apps in the mix. And a zillion and a half updates. It’s all in list form, separated and alphabetized with the utmost precision, and located after the break… right… now.

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As we mentioned last night, Gameloft has so graciously decided to ship free demo versions of their games to the App Catalog. Or at least some of them, with Assassin’s Creed and Gangstar demos joining the previously-released Asphalt 5 demo. And you know what? We like free demos, as we imagine everybody else does. In fact, because they’re limited gameplay, we’re sure Gameloft likes them too, because they’re bound to drive sales. Of course, Gameloft’s not the only game in the App Catalog town – there dozens of developers releasing new and updated apps every day, and we’ve got them all listed for you. Where? After the break, naturally.

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With more and more 3D games coming to the webOS App Catalog, users are left wondering if they’re worth the coin. While reviews go aways to assuage fears of quality, that still doesn’t mean you will like it. How do you know? You try it! Thankfully, Gameloft understands the meaning of “demo” and has popped out free demo versions of both Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles and Gangstar: West Coast Hustle (both appended with “FREE”), along with updates for the full versions of several of their games. These demo versions, like the previously released Asphalt 5 demo, provide a brief taste of how gameplay actually works.

Both Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s… FREE and Gangstar: West Coast Hustle – FREE are available now in the App Catalog (US only, sorry), for – you guessed it – free.

If you’ve watched any TV in the last week you’ve probably seen an ad for the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon, and maybe even one for the Pixi Plus. But TV land isn’t the only place you’ll see Palm gear advertised – as we saw earlier in the week with the Pixi Plus Verizon BOGO ad destined for a weekly newspaper. Newspapers are old media, baby. Signs on the street are where it’s at these days, with people walking around their cities and stuff. As such, we’ve received shots from around the country of reader running into Palm and Verizon advertising for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. It’s in office towers, its at bus stops, and its in art festivals… in Miami!

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According to Forbes, Sprint’s first WiMax handset – the first 4G handset from any US carrier – is expected to be available in the first half of 2010. While most logically expect that the phone will be the Android-powered HTC Supersonic (fitting name for a 4G phone), we have to wonder – could it be the C40?

Well, maybe. Frankly, we have no clue. In fact, the lack of info about the C40 has been driving us batty. But a summer launch would coincide with the Pre having been out for a year on Sprint – just in time for a full refresh. At the very least our no-evidence-except-for-intuition expectation is that Palm will release something that will amount to the Pre 2 on Sprint in the summer (or at least that what those of us on Sprint are hoping for), and there’s no reason that the C40 couldn’t be this device.

But why would we want a WiMax phone? For one, the interwebs would be ridiculously fast. Like mind-blowing fast for a phone. In theory, it could be faster than most Wi-Fi connections (Wi-Fi download speeds are limited by the slower ISP they’re hooked up to). With all that bandwidth – again, this is just speculation here – there’s no reason that a WiMax phone on Sprint couldn’t do voice and data at the same time – just run the voice over VOIP (technically EVDO already supports this). But a WiMax radio would only further amplify one of the biggest hurdles Palm is trying to overcome with just EVDO and HSDPA: battery life. Unless they’ve got a ridiculously efficient WiMax radio, a Palm phone with a stock 1150 mAh battery would last, oh, an hour. Maybe.

All that said, chances are that you don’t have WiMax service where you live, at least not yet. Sprint currently has WiMax coverage in a handful of cities across the United States, but in partnership with their quasi-subsidiary Clearwire are rapidly expanding coverage. Sprint expects to add New York City and San Francisco to their WiMax roadmap soon, a move that is sure to tempt many a frustrated iPhone user in those AT&T bottleneck metropolises. Additionally, despite the acceptance of LTE by carriers worldwide, global WiMax deployments are accelerating. eWeek notes that by the end of 2010 combined global WiMax coverage in 147 countries is expected to surpass 800 million people, and one billion a year later. Currently WiMax deployments cover around 620 million.

[via: Engadget, Android Central]

For those of us stuck working in a corporate environment (or working with a corporate environment), calling numbers with extensions is just a fact of life. But figuring out how to dial those extensions can be a pain. Do you store it in the contact name? That’s not elegant. Or as a note? You don’t want to pull up the note every time you need to call that person. Just remember it? Ha!

Thankfully, Palm has built pause and extension support right into the webOS phone and contacts app. Here’s how you do it:

Extensions: Enter the phone number in the contact, insert a P and then the desired extension. When you call this number a gray box will appear on the phone screen with the extension’s number – tapping it will dial the extension.

Pauses: If an extra screen tap seems like a chore to you, and you can count on this automated phone system to pick up right away, then pauses are your friend. Instead of a P, insert a T (seems kind of counter-intuitive, but it works) for a two second pause before the phone dials whatever numbers follow. Need more time? Add more T’s for more two-second blocks. Pauses can be especially useful when dialing into a service with an account number, like your bank. Enter the phone number, a T or two as needed, and then your account number. Voilà, skip over tedious button pressing or voice recognition and get to where you need to be.

The T for pause is more powerful than you might think. If you have to frequently navigate the same tree of automated phone options you can insert multiple pauses to burn through with automated ease. For example, 555-2419 TT 3 T 5 TT 8 will dial the phone number, pause four seconds, press 3, pause two seconds, press 5, and the pause four more seconds before pressing 8.

[via: Palm]

Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite webOS app?” or something a bit more complicated, like “where does Palm go from here?” Or maybe we’ll just end up chatting about our favorite movies, you never know. This time around we’re dispensing thoughts on something that has puzzled and eluded us for months: the Palm C40.

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And just like that, we’re past 1500 apps. And only 49 days after hitting 1000. At this pace we’re seeing more than 10 new apps a day, though we imagine that things are going to keep picking up in the months to come. Either way, there were a handful of new apps amongst the boatload of updated apps that came yesterday, and you’ll find that list after the break. In other news, it looks like Brighthouse Labs might be about half-way through their Quotes series of apps…

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Citing concerns over reliability due to new API requirements from Google, the developer of gDial Pro has decided to pull his app from the App Catalog. Here’s the message posted on gDial Pro’s Facebook page:

“Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are not going to be able to provide a reliable service as users have come to expect. We have decided we would rather pull the plug now than have users continue to experience disruptions due to various changes outside of our control. All subscribed users should already see a refund in their Paypal account. It was a crazy ride, but for now it’s over.”

Those circumstances are the new Google Voice APIs we discussed earlier in the week, and how the updated requirements for Google Voice are incompatible with the current restrictions of webOS and the Mojo SDK. While the door was very clearly left open for the return of gDial, we can’t see that happening until Google Voice APIs and webOS capabilities are on the same page.

While we are saddened to see a great application like gDial Pro disappear and frustrated that there is a disconnect in the access needed for powerful services like Google Voice and the access provided by webOS, we do have to applaud Nathan’s (gDial Pro’s developer) do-it-right-or-go-home attitude. A half-baked and unreliable user experience is not in the best interests of any user nor any serious developer. All that said, we do look forward to the day when the stars will align and gDial Pro can come back and get Google Voice action again going on webOS.

Thanks to amateurhack, Alben, and hparsons for the tip!

While the just-reduced-in-price Palm Pixi Plus has been running as a free phone along side the purchase of a Pre Plus, Verizon’s just-launched super Buy One, Get One Free sale now includes the Pre Plus as one of the free phones (so long as the other one is of equal or greater value). So you can essentially get two Verizon Pre Plus phones for 50% off. And that qualifies as a good deal. This BOGO sale isn’t even set up in pairs, so if you want a Pre Plus and your wayward spouse is lusting after a Droid Eris you can still get a free phone. Of course, you do have to sign a new two year contract for two lines to get the deal, but them’s the breaks when you get a deal like this.

Thanks to Audemars02, Tim, and danib62 for the tip!

Hoooo doggy there are a lot of updates in there. It’s like there must be some crackerjack update to webOS on the way and everybody wants to look busy for the big day. I kid, but the number of app updates that have been dropped in recent days does scream “update soon!” to us. Of course, webOS is coming soon, as was promised at CES: by the end of February. That’s eleven days, so let’s get crackin’! While your getting to the crackalackin’, there is a list of the new and updated apps after the break (naturally), awaiting your perusal.

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The paid App Catalog may have only been in existence for a few months now, but that doesn’t mean that paid apps can’t already be receiving major refreshes. Case in point: MoreStocks from More Solutions, which just hit its 2.0 release which brings a number of advanced features to the stock market app.

With MoreStocks 2.0 you can now set a schedule during which time the app will auto-update, so you’ll have no more fetching of market data during hours when the market is closed. Obviously, this is a major boon for your battery, especially if you’re looking to spend a night out on the town after a day in the office. That’s minor pudding compared to the two other big updates to MoreStocks.

Advanced charting is now an option, giving you the ability to not only compare the performance of multiple stocks, but also to check a stock’s action against benchmarks and the favorite of technical analysts: moving averages. MoreStocks 2.0 also comes with a new notifications system that acts as a stock ticker. Sitting in your notifications area will be a MoreStocks icon – expanding it gives you a dashboard stock ticker (see right) where you can cycle through your stocks with relative ease, all without leaving your current app. Let’s see an iPhone do that!

MoreStocks, v2.0, is available now in the App Catalog. It is a free update for current MoreStocks owners, or can be purchased for $3.99.

Announced at MWC was yet another partnership between the world’s cellular carriers that will end up resulting in, well, very little. Networks around the world have banded together to create the Wholesale Applications Community, which in essence will be a global cross-platform app effort. And here’s why it’s going to fail: manufacturers, particularly the ones that are invested in an operating system (such as Apple, Palm, and Nokia), will have no interest in participating. Especially those that have created an app store, Apple in particular.

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) will end as a failure, at best withering away as a token gesture to interoperability. There are a million political reasons why it won’t work, but the biggest hurdles to overcome are the technical ones: programming languages and APIs. While we can see feature phone manufacturers rallying around the WAC, nobody buys a T9 flip phone to run apps. They lack the hardware to properly execute – that’s why they’re feature phones.

App developers too aren’t interested in feature phones, because the meager hardware will limit what they can do. Not to mention the varying screen sizes, processors, radios, keypads, and everything else. App developers are interested in smartphones, and that’s where the WAC starts to fall apart.

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There are many password manager services out there, but only a few available to webOS users. In the future we’ll have one more to add to our list: LastPass. Actuall, if you’re into beta, the future is now. The LastPass webOS app, currently in beta testing, syncs with your LastPass account to provide access to all of your secure website and notes data. This isn’t just a client to access the website through a webOS interface – LastPass for webOS will sync your data onto the phone and store it locally, only jumping online to sync changes and only when you tell it to. LastPass will even have type-to-search functionality for our ever-growing lists of personal data.

Interested? You can download the beta now, thanks to Palm’s web app distribution system. Currently you can try this service free for two weeks, though syncing is a LastPass premium feature, so you’ll have to fork over some cash ($1 a month) if you think it’s worth it.

Thanks to dtatgenho and xylophon for the tip!

Unless you’re already running an Exchange account of some variety, all of your tasks are syncing exclusively to your Palm Profile. While Palm Profile failures aren’t a common event (though they are still worrisome), we still worry about data integrity. More importantly, we want a way to manage our data off of the device as well, to truly leverage the whole “cloud” thing. The folks at NuevaSync have a solution, and that solution is to apply Exchange to the problem.

NuevaSync isn’t just Exchange tasks. It’s also calendar and contact sync, and push email if you opt for the $25/year premium package. You might be thinking that what you want is not just another account to keep track of. Lucky you, NuevaSync doesn’t work that way. It’s more of a conduit that wraps Exchange goodness around your Google, Yahoo, AOL, Toodledo, or just plain IMAP account. The good folks at NuevaSync have even put together a quick how-to on adding a NuevaSync Exchange account to your webOS device.

Thanks to Dan for the tip!

Another light day in the App Catalog, but that’s no matter. We’ve got Flash on webOS 1.4, the SockCast, no 1.4 update, and much much more to keep us occupied! And some new apps too…

New apps:

• Chess.com, Free, by Chess.com: Play chess correspondence style – make your move against an online opponent, even if they aren’t there.
• Earthworm Jim, $4.99, by Gameloft: Take on the Psy-Crow and Queen Slug-for-a-butt to rescue Princess What’s-Her-Name in this classic 3D game.
• Leo F. Buscaglia Quotes, $1.99, by Brighthouse Labs: Quotes from the famed motivational speaker, author, and fundraiser.
• Literature Quotes, $1.99, by Brighthouse Labs: Famous phrases, jokes, and sayings from the world of literature.

Updated apps:

• App Cat Search, $0.99
• BuildaSearh, $2.49
• Chuck Norris Facts, Free
• GroceryList, $1.99
• Handy Construction Calculators, $3.99
• Locate-A-Rama, Free
• MarketSimplified, Free
• Match This!, Free
• Memory, $1.49
• MMA Trivia Round 1, $0.99
• My Pets, $0.99
• Outline Tracker Free, Free
• Paratrooper, $1.99
• Slide Show, $1.99
• Wake N Play, $0.99

If you boot up the App Catalog on your Pre you’ll find one of the most classic video games of all time: Earthworm Jim. First released on the Sega Genesis in 1994, Earthworm Jim has hit consoles across time and space and has now landed on webOS. Whip out your eggbeater and take on the evil Psy-Cow and Queen Slug-for-a-Butt to rescue the dear Princess What’s-Her-Name.

With twelve different enemy types and nine bosses, Gameloft’s latest PDK release comes with four different gameplay styles: side scrolling run and gun, space racing, bungee jumping, and underwater. Step in or a blast from the past with Earthworm Jim, available now in the App Catalog for $4.99.

Thanks to Alijah for the tip!