Palm slashes guidance, stock tanks

[Entertainment72]

Palm is slashing its guidance, confirming that its Pre and Pixi smartphones and WebOS platform have been off to a slow start. Palm shares are down 18% on the news.
Since there's no obvious way that Palm is going to boost its market share -- even selling its phones at Verizon Wireless, the top U.S. carrier, hasn't helped much, and we doubt AT&T will make a big impact -- it seems that CEO Jon Rubinstein would be best off looking for a buyer now.

So who wants a next-generation smartphone platform? RIM? Nokia? HP? Dell?

Palm expects third-quarter sales to be in the range of $285 million to $310 million on a GAAP basis and $300 million to $320 million on a non-GAAP basis. The Street was expecting $425 million.

Palm also expects full year sales to be "well below" its forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion; the Street was expecting $1.6 billion.

"Revenues for the quarter and full year are being impacted by slower than expected consumer adoption of the company's products that has resulted in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods," the company said in a statement.

[papped]

Not surprising, since most of the Palm outlook even on the Palm fan sites has been sketchy from the get-go...

That and just watching Palm you can see how they keep screwing up.

[wxman2003]

Soon the stock will be worthless. Bye bye Palm.

Palm's stock plummets after analysts cut targets to $0. - Mar. 19, 2010