Mobile advertising company AdMob released a new report that shows how serious Palm's financial woes have become, as the company continues to have problems keeping and attracting new customers.
"As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being," said Jon Rubinstein, Palm CEO, in an employee letter. "On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March."
Palm's previous financial outlook expected $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion in Q3 sales, but the company recently readjusted the outlook to a mere $285 million to $310 million.
The Pre, Pre Plus and Pixi Plus smartphones have helped Palm -- Sprint-Nextel and Verizon Wireless remain committed to Palm products -- but consumer interest hasn't been extremely high. Verizon started offering Palm phones in January, with AT&T expected to offer Palm phones before the end of the year.
Wireless providers are expected to remain focused on carrier-exclusive phones, but the expanded potential customer market could significantly help Palm.
The more time that passes, the less likely I believe Palm will be able to do anything relevant in the mobile phone space. Sure, the company has WebOS - but even that has been unable to compete with software offered from Google, Apple, RIM and other competitors - and even more companies are now entering the mobile market.
Are you impressed with the Palm WebOS smartphones?
