Author: Ryan Kairer

PIC reader Tolga M. wrote in with this eyewitness report of a Palm marketing effort currently underway this weekend in Times Square, New York City.

Hi there guys, was taking some out-of-town friends around NYC today for some sight-seeing and ran into a large group of people wearing snazzy Palm ‘uniforms’ in the middle of Times Square. They were giving out Palm branded lip-balm, bags, and other goodies, and demo-ing the Pre Plus to passers by, and had acquired a good-sized crowd. Interestingly they also had 4-5 ‘Smart’ Cars all decked out in Palm wrap-arounds. We were on our way somewhere and I forgot I had my camera so I don’t have any shots, but I briefly talked with one of the Palm reps and they seemed very knowledgeable and friendly and said they’d be there for a few days (probably taking advantage of the Memorial Day tourist crowd).

They are giving away 8 Pré’s per day via an electronic raffle that they can enter you for (you give them your email). So if you’re in NYC this weekend check it out. I think they have a billboard in Times Square too. All in all it seemed like they had someone with half a brain planning the event. Okay, have a great weekend!

Matias Duarte, Palm’s VP of Human Interface and User Experience, has left the company according to a digital daily report this morning. Originally hired in Sept ’07, Mr. Duarte was one of the leads on the webOS project and was responsible for much of the overall design and user interface. Readers may remember him from the initial unveiling of webOS at CES in Jan 2009.

Reports have now been confirmed that Duarte will be taking a new spot at Tyrell Corp. Google, where he will become the new User Experience Director for Android.

A week after posting about a $49 deal, Amazon.com has now pushed the AT&T flavored Palm Pre Plus into penny phone territory. Not even on the market for more than a fortnight, the discount is only good for orders placed online with new two year service agreements.

The “Penny for a Pre” Amazon deal is also good for Verizon customers as well, however the Sprint version of the original Pre is currently being offered for $79.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.

“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.

Sprint’s CFO Robert Brust has gone on record stating that the companies huge push for the Palm Pre launch was a disappointment for the carrier. At an investment conference covered by the WSJ, Mr. Brust apparently told analysts:

“The Pre didn’t work out as well as we hoped”

He went on to acknowledge the phone struggled since its debut and even claims that part of the issue was an unspecified lack of supply. A rather curious remark considering there were very few reported supply issues at and following the Palm Pre launch. When asked about the iPhone, Brust said “we’d love to have it.”

Palm’s new AT&T Palm Pre Plus has not even been on the market for more than a week, and its already seeing large discounts via the usual online channels.

Amazon.com is now selling the AT&T flavored version of the Pre Plus for $49.99 after the usual 2 year service agreements and discounts. This represents a $100 discount from AT&T’s current sticker price and $49.98 more than the going rate on its domestic CDMA brethren.

Palm, Inc. today announced that the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus phones will be available in the UK on O2 from 28 May. They will be available from free, depending on tariff, in all O2 stores and online at www.o2.co.uk.

During HP’s earnings conference call today, HP CEO Mark Hurd spoke a bit on the Palm acquisition and some of HP plans for its new assets. During his opening remarks he mentions a bit about how HP will utilize webOS saying (via CNET):

“In order to enhance our intellectual property…in the connected-mobility space. We expect to leverage webOS into a variety of form factors, including slates and Web-connected printers, […] “With a whole series of Web-connected printers, as they connect to the Web, they need an OS.”

HP’s Todd Bradley already strongly hinted at webOS on tablet like devices from the beginning saying HP would “invest heavily” in webOS technology. In the financial department, HP had an impressive second quarter with net revenue of $30.8 billion, up 13%, or $3.5 billion, from a year earlier with strong double digit growth across all regions.

The worldwide mobile phone market grew 21.7% in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10), a strong rebound from the market contraction in Q1 2009. Growth was fuelled by increased demand for converged mobile devices, more commonly known as smartphones, and the global economic recovery. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 294.9 million units in the first quarter of 2010 compared to 242.4 million units in the first quarter of 2009.

Converged mobile devices, which allow consumers and business people to trade wireless e-mails for example, have become increasingly popular as a wider and more powerful array of devices have become available. The device class and a recovering traditional mobile phone category helped the market avoid a repeat of 1Q09, when the market declined 16.6% in the midst of the global economic recession.

Bloomberg has published an article on the Hewlett-Packard deal. As one would expect, the article gives a summary of the news of the day with a financial focus. The math wizards there have worked out what Palm investment heros Elevation Partners will take away from their overall investments in Palm Inc. Elevation injected over $460 million since the big recapitalization deal in 2007.

Because of the terms of its investments, Elevation made $25 million, or a 5.4 percent gain, on Palm, while common shareholders lost 65 percent in that period, based on the purchase price.

Also, perhaps comically, Bloomberg just won’t let the Palm is for sale meme die. The authors let a little wall st. rumor slip in which purports that Nokia may just still want to put in a bid.

HP held an conference call with investors and analysts on the Palm acquisition. In the call Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP laid out the motivations behind the transaction. Mr. Bradley remarked that it represents a “transformational deal for the connected mobile device market” and he gave a few details and hints about HP’s plans for the future of webOS.

Mr. Bradley made a point to highlight that webOS lends itself to additional mobile form factors and he stressed the benefits of owning the entire mobile experience. He said that HP sees opportunities in other mobile form factors and market segments for the platform. In specific, larger slate style devices were mentioned a number of times as well as “potential netbooks.” He remarked that HP had gone through the due diligence to confirm that webOS would be able to support such future products. When pressed in the Q&A he declined to give any sort of timeframe or potential product roadmap.

HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

The combination of HP’s global scale and financial strength with Palm’s unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP’s ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm’s unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications.

Palm’s developer portal has recently added a video library section and its off to an excellent start with a number of webOS courses and tutorials.

Developers looking for more information into getting started on developing for webOS should checkout the new Palm developer podcast series. Now on their second installment, the video podcast is hosted by Palm’s developer relations duo, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer. The second video (also embedded after the break) gives a entry level crash course in getting started with webOS programming.

Also in the mix is a ongoing series of recorded lectures from Stanford on developing mobile apps for webOS. The college level course is currently underway at the university and is being taught by a rotating selection of Palm staff. Palm is making the recorded classes available on its video library and youtube.

The PalmInfocenter Store has rolled out a new mobile accessory store. The mobile optimized store lets users browse and buy Palm accessories right from their Palm device. The store carries many of the latest and most popular accessories for Palm devices including the Pre, Pixi, Centro, Treo’s and classic PDA’s.

PalmInfocenter has long had an accessory store, which compliments our Palm OS software store. The store carries a wide range of accessories including cases, bluetooth headsets, extended batteries, chargers, cables and cradles, memory cards and much more.

With the addition of the mobile accessory shop, customers can now get everything they need to make the most of their device in one convent spot. Shipping is available worldwide and starts at just $5.95 for most items delivered in the US. Payment can be made via major credit cards or paypal. Simply visit the PalmInfocenter mobile site and browse to the store, or key in m.palminfocenter.com on your phone.

Users still holding out for a robust office document editing solution for webOS are going to have to keep waiting according to the latest news from DataViz. The longtime developers of the Documents to Go editing suite, which was born on the classic Palm OS platform, have announced that a long promised version of Documents to Go for webOS is at a “standstill” with no release date in sight.

The company has released a statement on its corporate blog detailing the situation. The company says they are continuing to work with Palm on the situation, but “given the current environment at Palm”, the company can not commit to a release nor build out the app it needs. DataViz still leaves the door open to a release at some point, but given the lengthy wait to date and the tone of the post it does not look hopeful at present.

Sprint has lowered the price on the Palm Pixi from $50 a pop to free. New Sprint customers and those willing to re-up on their contracts can now grab the strikingly thin handset from Sprint’s online store for free with a new 2-year contract.

This marks the second major price drop on the Sprint Palm Pixi since its debut last November. The current offer is only found on Sprint’s website at this time, however other channels and perhaps retail stores (& happy meals) may be soon to follow.

The Financial Times has published a new article on Palm with a number of select quotes from Jon Rubinstein. The article is entitled “Palm pledges to survive as an independent“ and as such it focus on the recent Palm is for sale meme with some color commentary from the Palm CEO.

The article highlights Ruby’s media message that he has a plan to return the company to profitability. Citing a team working “fast and furious on new handsets” he mentions that they “do have a strong pipeline of products in the future.” He also has to answer questions on the acquisition talk to which he says it will always be something they have to consider, and he also mentions shortly after that they may even be open to licensing webOS should a “appropriate strategic relationship or business deal” make sense.

Word on rumor street today is that HTC has taken a hard look at Palm and has decided to pass on an offer according to a new article on Reuters. A source close to the discussions reportedly remarked “There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward.”

This development follows earlier reports from last week that Dell and Huawei also reached similar conclusions. However, the rumor report still leave the door open for Lenovo (or another Chinese mainland company), which kicked off the much of the recent Palm is for sale stories earlier this month. Palm nor Lenovo both declined to comment for the Reuters piece.

Palm Inc. has released a free update to its Facebook application for webOS devices. The highlight of this release is webOS notification support, so now your device can unobtrusively inform you when you need to refuel your tractor in FarmVille.

Facebook v1.2 is a free download from Palm’s app catalog. The app is built and maintained by Palm’s own developer relations team. The version also includes some other updates such as support for Facebook videos, keyboard shortcuts and more. In addition, Palm says they have “polished” up the user experience.

Palm’s innovative new development tool for webOS is now out of beta and has officially gone 1.0. Project Ares is a complete webOS development environment in a web browser. Its aim is to simplify and lower the entry barrier for developing webOS applications by allowing developers to code, debug and build webOS apps within a standard desktop web browser.

Version 1.0 has added a number of new features and tools for developers. Palm has posted article covering the highlights of the new release as well as a number of developer tutorials. Some of the additions include new interface free components, revised toolbars, find and replace, JSLint integration, Google Maps wrappers, code beautification functions and lots of bug fixes.