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How much has the arrival of the Pre phone helped Palm?

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:September 18, 2009

Palm have announced that they will be dropping Windows Mobile for future devices and instead focusing on their own platform, webOS.

Calif.-based Smart phone maker Palm Inc. on posted a wider fiscal first-quarter loss, after paying preferred dividends of $164.5 million, or $1.17 per share — its ninth in a row.

Compared with a loss of $41.9 million, or 39 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue tumbled to $68 million from $366.9 million, largely because Palm deferred revenue from products that run its new WebOS operating system — namely the Pre — to later periods.

Palm shipped a total of 823,000 during the quarter, a 134 percent increase over its fiscal fourth quarter of 2009 and a year-over-year dsmartphonesecrease of 30 percent.

The decrease from last year means that the Pre isn’t making up for declining sales of the older Palm products. The Pre is available to Sprint customers in the U.S. and Bell Mobility in Canada.

Speaking at its quarterly earnings conference call Palm’s chief executive said that the company was going to focus exclusively on the webOS platform that is behind its Pre and Pixi handsets.

“We’re launching more great Palm webOS products with more carriers, and turning our sights toward growth,” said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and chief executive officer.

“We’re making significant progress with Palm’s transformation, and our culture of innovation is stronger than ever.”

The announcement will be a blow for Microsoft which has been seeing people migrate away from its Operation System.

Palm adopted Windows Mobile back in 2005 as a way to help boost its sales to enterprise customers.

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