Filed under: Cellphones

The New York Times has a little puff piece on Palm to accompany the launch of the Treo Pro today, and buried between the fawning references to Jon Rubenstein’s former gig at Apple and how that’s affected his management style (”He made them redesign the battery panel on the back so it didn’t squeak. And he asked for fixes to the software so it would lock up less frequently.” — solid work, homey) there’s a little tidbit about how Palm OS II and a single new device to run the new software will arrive in the “first half of next year.” Two things interesting about that: first, that’s a much wider timeframe than the “early 2009″ window we’ve been hearing for a while and could signal even more delays, and second, it’s a little odd that Palm is going to debut the new OS on just one device. Launching on a single device is pretty Apple-esque, so we’ll cut Rubes some slack on that, even if we don’t think it’s the best idea — but at this point the only real info we’re hearing about Palm OS II is news of delays, and that’s not exactly out of the Jobs playbook — remember, real artists ship.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Palm continued to flaunt its almost inexplicable boost in health in an earnings call yesterday. According to reports, honcho Ed Colligan boasted of a 29 percent gain in smartphone sales year-over-year, largely in part to the stellar performance of the company’s budget-priced (with contract) Centro. In light of the recent negative outlook from investors, retail store closings, a constantly delayed OS update, and fierce competition, it’s a pretty impressive feat to not only stay afloat, but manage some small victories. Now if they can just deliver on those OS and device promises we keep hearing about, they may stay in this game yet.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Palm’s latest quarterly results might have been pretty gloomy, with a loss of $9.6M on revenue of $349M and an expected drop in revenue to $310M next quarter, but according to CEO Ed Colligan, the ship is about to be righted. Speaking to analysts during the company’s financial results conference call, Colligan said that a combination of cost-cutting measures, a reduction in the number of devices in Palm’s lineup, and work on the next Palm OS would revive Palm’s flagging fortunes. Ed also said that there was “no acceptable excuse” for missing the launch of the Treo 755p on Verizon in Q4, and that Palm was “done” revising existing products — instead focusing on “breakthrough” devices and “revolutionary designs.” We can only hope he’s telling the truth — and of course, we’ve got some suggestions for him if he’s out of ideas.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Our main man Ed Colligan is on the scene once again, this time giving some serious lip service to investors on the future of Palm and its “upcoming” new OS. According to reports, Ed informed the the crew of dudes and dudettes (via the company’s Q1 FY08 conference call) that the Centro systems team and Foleo engineers are “totally focused” on delivering the Linux-based OS (Palm’s in-house work, not ACCESS’s ALP), and announced that it will be available by the end of the next calendar year. Fleshing out his bold statements, Colligan noted that the new platform will retain the ease of use and developer support of the badly ailing current Palm OS, and that it will enable the company to deliver the UI across various products, including Foleo-like devices. The Palm honcho went on to say that development has gone, “As well as possibly could be expected,” and added that the company has no plans to hand over the smartphone market to anyone else, telling investors that its next generation of products will be “revolutionary device types.” Just like Fox Mulder, we want to believe — but it’s going to take a lot more than honeyed words to hold our interest, Ed. Hey — feel free to invite us over to the pad for some hands-on.

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