O2 Germany has had a teaser page for the Palm Pre for some time – it has now been updated.
Unfortunately, no new information has been made available. the box is still scheduled for “fall”, but is now decorated by a few fingers:
Visit the page here:
http://o2online.de/nw/handys/palmpre/palm-pre.html
A recent trip to Carl Zeiss provided me with the opportunity to analyze camera phone components – enjoy the images below.
First of all, a look at the size. The component on the left is a complete camera assembly, which is then followed by a CCD sensor. Next to that is a lens in an autofocus assembly and finally an optical lens on the right:
Here is another shot showing the components next to an XM5800 for scale:
Once again – big thanks to Nokia and Zeiss for the opportunity…
At this vear’s MWC, Access Co. representatives were confident that ALP devices would hit the road “this year”. Emblaze Mobile’s Edelweiss probably was on their shortlist back then…
TalkingMobile analyzed the financials of the mother company and made the following observation:
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On the other hand, due to no remarks on the Edelweiss device we conclude that it just dried out.
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As of now, the company has not stated anything – stay tuned…
Palm has always been extremely dependent on its carrier partners (after giving up on its PDA business, that is). This dependency now back-fires: go with the gang, hang with em…
SlashGear reports the following:
Palm has been apparently been busy warning UK retailers that it is less than happy with pre-order pages for SIM-free versions of the Palm Pre, informing them that the webOS smartphone will only be available in locked form (presumably to O2, the company’s UK carrier partner). Our sibling site MyPre.com has been informed by one affected retailer that Palm’s legal team “requested” in no uncertain terms that they take down their listing, where the Pre had been tentatively offered for £450-500 ($737-819).
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Even though the decision makes perfect sense for O2, I personally think that Palm would be better off selling unlocked devices for a premium price along with the droves of unlocked handsets.
Either way – stay tuned…
Some developers were able to get paid for their work for some time – according to All Things Digital, the milkable proles will be unleashed upon the store on the 24th:
As of now, no further information is available…
Engadget spotted the image below on the web site of an NBC show called Heroes:
Unfortunately, I don’t quite agree with their analysis:
… ‘Cause evidently there’s a ridiculously large, presumably GSM-based Palm Pre making an appearance, and it’ll be showing off the newest webOS feature: an updated ‘Contacts’ card. We could be off base here, but it looks as if the new card will sport psychedelic graphics and Japanese expressions when someone dials in …
IMHO, we are looking at product placement here – but at product placement for the USA, and not for Japan…
Score one – our prediction was spot-on. Version 5 of Opera Mini will bring the long-developed tab support. The picture on the left is from the vendor; I will do a detailed review as soon as I am back in the office.
Opera Mini 5 will furthermore add the following features to the browser:
The product is currently available as a beta – hit the URL below for further info and let us know how it goes:
http://www.opera.com/mini/next/
Palm built quite a few immensely successful Windows Mobile devices in the past, but has not released any updates to its lineup for some time.
According to Ryan Kairer’s PalmInfoCenter, it looks like Palm gives up on its WM experiment. They quote Jon Rubinstein as follows:
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Given the importance of webOS to our overall strategy, we’ve made the decision to dedicate all future development resources to the evolution of webOS, which means that going forward our roadmap will include only Palm webOS- based devices.
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Aah, the joy – the boys at Palm’s just had to release their financials for Q1 2010. The release is below, with emphasis added by yours truly for easier reading:
Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today reported that total revenues in the first quarter of fiscal year 2010, ended Aug. 28, 2009, were $68.0 million. Gross profit was ($2.8) million, and gross margin was (4.1) percent. These results include the effects of subscription accounting applied to Palm webOS products as required by GAAP.(1) In accordance with this methodology, revenues and direct cost of revenues for Palm webOS products (currently Palm(R) Pre(TM) smartphone) are deferred and recognized over the product’s estimated economic life.
To facilitate comparisons to Palm’s historical results, Palm has included non-GAAP adjusted measures, which exclude the impact of subscription accounting, stock-based compensation and other items detailed later in this release. The company believes this information will help investors better evaluate its current period performance and trends in its business.
Non-GAAP Adjusted Revenues in the first quarter totaled $360.7 million, non-GAAP Adjusted Gross Profit was $100.6 million and non-GAAP Adjusted Gross Margin was 27.9 percent.
“We’re making significant progress with Palm’s transformation, and our culture of innovation is stronger than ever. 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.
The company shipped a total of 823,000 smartphone units during the quarter, representing a 134 percent increase from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009 (editor: not only Pre, but also all other boxen) and a year-over-year decrease of 30 percent. Smartphone sell-through for the quarter was 810,000 units, up 76 percent from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009 and down 21 percent year-over-year.
On a GAAP basis, net loss applicable to common stockholders for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 was $(164.5) million, or $(1.17) per diluted common share. This compares to a net loss applicable to common stockholders for the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 of $(41.9) million, or $(0.39) per diluted common share.
The company’s net loss applicable to common stockholders on a GAAP basis reflects new accounting guidance, effective this quarter, which requires the anti-dilutive provisions of Palm’s series C preferred shares and related warrants to be treated as derivatives for financial reporting purposes. The fair value of the derivatives were estimated as of the first day of fiscal year 2010 and are marked to market on a quarterly basis, with any change in value reflected in the company’s financial results for the period. As of Aug. 28, 2009, Palm recorded a $235.0 million current liability related to its series C derivatives. A $27.4 million non-cash loss on series C derivatives was reflected in the company’s financial results. With regard to the series C derivatives, any future increases in Palm’s stock price from period to period will be reflected as a non-cash loss on these derivatives in the company’s financial results, and any future decreases will be reflected as a non-cash gain in the company’s financial results.
Non-GAAP Net Loss for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 was $(13.6) million, or $(0.10) per diluted share. This compares to a non-GAAP Net Loss for the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 of $(12.8) million, or $(0.12) per diluted share.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 totaled $(149.2) million. EBITDA, adjusted to exclude the impact of subscription accounting, stock-based compensation, net other income (expense), restructuring charges (adjustments), an impairment of non-current auction rate securities and a loss on series C derivatives, or Adjusted EBITDA, totaled $(2.0) million.
The company’s cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments balance was $211.8 million at the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2010. Cash used in operations for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 was $45.1 million.
Palm’s quarterly operating results are, and will continue to be, significantly impacted by the timing and size of product launches. The company’s non-GAAP first quarter results reflected the scale of the launch of Palm Pre with Sprint at the beginning of the quarter and the subsequent launch of Palm Pre with Bell Mobility in Canada. Due to the timing and scale of expected product launches in Palm’s second fiscal quarter compared to those which took place in Palm’s first fiscal quarter, and due to lower anticipated demand for legacy products, the company expects non-GAAP Adjusted Revenues for its second quarter of fiscal year 2010 to be between $240 million and $270 million.
The company’s planned product launches with additional carriers in the second half of its fiscal year, together with continuing sales from products launched in the first half of its fiscal year, are expected to yield stronger operating performance, resulting in non-GAAP Adjusted Revenues for fiscal year 2010 of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion.
As of now, no further information is available…
A recent TechCrunch interview could turn out to be a major problem for Palm – the developer in question stated the following:
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Question one: Palm is really paying companies to write apps for the Pre? Yes. How much? All I got despite truly obnoxious questioning was “under $500,000.”
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This essentially confirms my long-harbored theory of VIP developers: at Palm’s, some animals are more equal than others….
P.S. Let’s see if some other developers manage to a$$ out some cash from Palm’s after this announcement…
Palm exhibited at the PlayBite convention which is being held in London as these lines are being written – unsurprisingly, the boys had a Pre on their booth.
The event got some coverage from Sky TV, and the Pre is said to be in the 8 minute video below. I couldn’t find it though – if you manage to find it, let me know:
Users sitting in Western Europe rarely hear about CDMA handsets, and consider them “a dying breed” limited to the USA.
However, this couldn’t be further from the truth – the CDMA Development Group has just stated that there are now more than 500 million people using CDMA-based handsets:
COSTA MESA, CA — September 14, 2009 — The CDMA Development Group (CDG) today announced that the CDMA subscriber base has surpassed half a billion users worldwide. At the end of the second quarter of 2009, there were 502 million people using the CDMA family of technologies (including cdmaOne™), with 494 million CDMA2000® subscribers and 128 million EV-DO broadband users.
“The CDG is proud to announce that CDMA is now used by over 500 million people,” said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. “We congratulate our member companies on their successful efforts in creating a thriving CDMA community. We are particularly pleased to see growth accelerating in a number of areas.”
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Even though these numbers still pale when compared to GSM’s, the market definitely is there – if you make a good CDMA device, users are likely to come by in droves…
Some things never change…especially not if we are talking about the servants of the Orange orb. Their famous Tungsten T handheld shipped with a TI OMAP processor which also contained an extremely powerful DSP – and was never used in any applications.
Engadget now reports that the QualComm chipset used in the Pixi is similar:
…including one dedicated 600MHz applications processor, and a separate 400MHz modem processor to offload some of the heavy lifting. Otherwise, the phone is said to pack a 200MHz, OpenGL 2.0-supporting GPU for some decent gaming capabilities, and a 320MHz application DSP to handle multimedia
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Has Palm borked up again?
Fortunately, the situation is less miserable this time due to a property of the webOS: its apps are platform independent and cannot access hardware directly. This makes life easier for Palm: if they optimize the VM to use some DSP hardware, apps which use these parts of the VM benefit automatically.
However, the situation isn’t perfect. Palm now has two boxen with almost completely different hardware on the market: this likely means loads of extra work for developers.
Keep in mind that user perception of application quality depends heavily on response times – if the two handsets respond completely different, you need to test on both…
802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN’s are an industry standard managed by an US institute known as IEEE. Unfortunately, they are dead slow…which has prompted hardware manufacturers to roll a new standard of their own.
Dubbed 802.11n, hardware implementing it has been on the market for some time. Due to this fait accompli, the IEEE had to act in order to preserve its face:
The IEEE standards group today officially ratified 802.11n, the most recent standard for Wi-Fi. The move officially takes the wireless spec out of the draft status it has been in since 2006 and lets companies develop 11n hardware knowing that it will work properly with any device that supports the technology. Officials plan to publish the final standard in mid-October.
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Want some background info? Get it at Electronista’s via the link below:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/09/11/ieee.approves.80211n.at.last/
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