Palm Sinking at a Slower Rate

I was one of three people that camped outside of my suburban Best Buy last year to guarantee I walked out with a Palm device that was buzzing the interwebs. Despite syncing my life, the Palm buzz has sizzled out. Android powered devices, the continued success of iPhone, and the fact that many companies are handing out Blackberries to their employees has made it very difficult for Palm to get noticed.

Today may be a low point.  Palm released financial numbers that are mediocre at best, and Palm stock took a beating in after hours trading.  But I’m not worried about Palm.

I skimmed their financial numbers and didn’t see a breakdown in their revenue, but Palm finally has close to 2000 apps in their App Catalog.  This growing catalog provides a constant revenue stream for Palm Inc.  Their App Catalog alone should help stabilize their cash flow.

More Palm devices are showing up around town.  Just today at lunch a high school age kid kept showing his Palm Pre to his mom.  I was at Pei Wei on Saturday and another geeky guy like myself was constantly sliding out his Palm Pre keyboard.  I’m starting to notice more women with a Palm Pre or Pixi in hand.

Make no mistake Palm’s future is mixed.  They’ve definitely lost their mojo in the marketplace, but customers are choosing it even if the rate is less than that of Android devices.  I still think the webOS controlled experience is better than iPhone.  I’m a fan of open solutions, but it appears that the Android is more Wild West than community driven.  While I’m betting Palm devices carry on, it’s quite possible they may be wearing a Dell, HP or Nokia label.

All of these mixed signals remind me of that summer day in June of 2009 when I was waiting outside of Best Buy with two other Palm fans.  After a couple of hours the Best Buy manager opened the front door and said, “What are you all doing here?”