Palm above expectations – 670,000 phones sold in fall

14th December, 2009 by adina
Tags: Mobiles, News, Palm, Phones, Pixi, Pre

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An investment note from Kaufman Brothers shows that Palm had a better than expected fall quarter. Senior analyst Shaw Wu outlines that about 670,000 Pre and Pixi phones have been sold between September and November this year and, although less than the summer peak of 823,000 handsets, the results are still surprising and showed an orientation towards the Pre model. Average prices have dropped down to $406 without carrier discounts, due to the lower price of the Pixi. Wu predicts fewer losses than anticipated, as the company should earn about$276 million in pure revenue and have a net loss of only 29 cents instead of the feared 32 cents.

Wu is justifying his predictions by saying that many investors are showing a negative attitude towards Palm and simply ignore the advantages of its handsets, such as the multi-touch support and the top-to-bottom integration of the operating system and hardware. Being not always commercially successful is not a reason for not being an attractive acquisition for such a company which targets to getting an edge in smartphones, according to Shaw Wu.

As it is already known, Sprint’s exclusivity will end in 2010 and there is no information about what carriers would adopt Palm’s phones. This is the primary concern about how Palm will manage next year. A possible candidate for the Pre device is Verizon, but companies like AT&T and other international carriers could help Palm’s finances, as its devices are relatively quickly released.

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