According to Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley, Palm has seen modest sell through thus far on the new Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus at Verizon Wireless. In a note to clients, Walkley writes that he is “slightly disappointed” with initial sales at Verizon. Stating the obvious, Walkley believes a more aggressive media campaign should bolster demand. Despite his comments, he does believe Palm is on track to meet his initial forecast of 1 million webOS based phones in the February quarter. To hit his 1.5 million goal for the May quarter, Walkley says it will require “ramping sell-through trends at Verizon.”
Verizon has taken a unique approach to marketing the Palm Pre Plus and it will be interesting to see if the gamble pays off. We’re still wondering where where the Palm Pixi Plus fits into Verizon’s marketing plans, if it does. Does it make sense to split advertising dollars on two webOS devices or get more traction from one campaign?
Ruh-roh. Verizon’s new Mobilehotspot software just got new competition in the form of homebrew app myTether. The developer has released a Verizon compatible version that effectively does the same thing as the Mobilehotspot app, but without the monthly fees. Of course, myTether will set you back $14.95, but that’s a small price to pay when compared to the monthly hotspot fee of $40 for a 5GB plan.
We should caution you that if Verizon happens to see activity on your account that indicates you might be using something other than a Palm Pre Plus smartphone, you could subject yourself to contract termination or overage charges. With that disclaimer out of the way, we’ve never seen this happen to folks who were using PDANet.
Kalemsoft has released NesEM, a Nintendo NES emulator for webOS. The application is a port from their popular Palm OS app. NesEM allows you to run over 300 orginal NES games include PunchOut, Super Mario, Legend of Zelda and more. The application does not ship with the ROM’s needed, but those are available by searching the Interwebs.
NesEM supports four channel sound, game saving, automatic speed adjustment, key config control and anti-aliasing image smoothing. You can download a demo from Kalemsoft or from within Preware. The full version retails for $9.99.
For obvious reasons, this is not available in the Palm App Catalog.
So if classic gaming is your thing, you’d be hard pressed to find a better value than NesEM.
Palm shares surged today on comments by Jonathon Goldberg, an analyst for Deutsche Bank. Goldberg raised his target price for the stock citing strong potential for webOS devices and a “takeover possibility“. From what’s been reported, there is absolutely no evidence that a takeover will happen in the foreseeable future. Goldberg simply believes the company is “a potential target” for a larger company (Dell, Nokia) looking to break in or expand their presence in the mobile market.“As the only standalone entity, we think there is a real potential for Palm to be acquired in the next two years,” Goldberg wrote.
“We think Palm has created a valuable asset in its webOS. If they can grow their installed base of users and keep the carrier momentum going, this value should become more apparent,” continued Goldberg.
As for device sales, Goldberg believes Palm can sell 600,000 units into Verizon in this quarter alone. He also speculates the Palm’s App Catalog could outpace RIM and Android by the end of this year.
Amazon is now offering the Palm Pixi Plus on Verizon Wireless for just $49.99. This is a $50 savings over the current offer on Verizon Wireless. If you don’t mind two contracts, Verizon is still offering their BOGO (buy one, get one free) on webOS devices. However, for those looking to get in the Palm Pixi Plus at a good price, this is the lowest we’ve seen.
As a reminder, the Palm Pixi Plus is essentially the same model that we reviewed, but comes with WiFi.
A big complaint amongst the tight knit Palm community has been the questionable marketing messages in previous Palm Pre ad campaigns. Despite statistics showing that the creepy Palm girl resonated with viewers, it was not very popular with Palm Pre users. (Editor’s note: We actually like the ads). Those ads were run by Palm, who most will agree did a fantastic job with the Palm Pixi ads. Can you get that Sleepyhead song out of your head? In addition to Palm running ads, the carriers also pick up a big part of the marketing responsibility. Most will remember the onslaught of DROID commercials that aired leading up to it’s launch. It was non-stop. As a result, the DROID saw increased sales numbers.
Last week, Verizon launched the Palm Pre Plus and you probably wouldn’t know of it if you didn’t follow tech blogs. So where is the advertising and what’s coming? Well, the first ads we’ve seen cropped up on our iPhone forums at everythingiCafe and color us confused. The banner reads:
“The 3G smartphone
smart enough for mom.”
UPDATE: PreCentral alerts us to a few new ads that have showed upon Verizon’s YouTube account.
Verizon spent a year waiting for webOS devices and this is the campaign that is going to drive adoption of the Palm Pre Plus. Say it ain’t so.
Have you seen a TV ad or perhaps a banner ad with a more appropriate message? What do you think of the new ads. Let us know in the comments.
One thing about Ed Hardy designs, you likely either love them or hate them. For those who like this type of design, your wish for Ed Hardy designed Palm Pre cases has become a reality. You can pimp out your Palm Pre with the latest in Ed Hardy style for just $39 and you’ll have your choice between two designs: King Dog or LKS Tattoo.
Have a favorite or there’s no chance in hell you’d be seen in public with one of these cases on your Palm Pre? Weigh in and let us know in the comments.
There’s plenty of chatter on the Internet regarding the iPad. Spend some time in an iPad forum and you’ll find it’s mostly negative. It’s not that the iPad is a terrible product. Most haven’t seen it in person or held it in their hands. I’d venture to say that most think the concept is a great idea, given the massive excitement prior to Wednesday’s announcement by Apple. So if there is a new market for a product that fits somewhere between smartphone and laptop, wouldn’t you think Palm would be positioned to jump in and quickly? webOS developers can easily scale their apps to fit on a mythical webOS Pad with a few easy code changes. With fallout from the iPad, you certainly wouldn’t need any focus groups to know what people want from this device. Here’s what we’d like to see if Palm were to design a webOS Pad. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section.
Multi-tasking: That’s a no-brainer, since it’s already part of webOS smartphones
Flash support: On a device of this size, there is no good excuse for it not being supported. Plus, we know it’s coming with 1.4, so we can safely put it on our webOS Pad.
Productivity apps: Ok, Apple’s got their iWork suite, so Palm would have their work cut out for them here. Provide the developers who create Docs To Go the ability to create a native app, one that would allow for editing Office Docs.
Games: webOS PDK is scheduled for a public beta in March, so we should see ramping up of games.
eBooks: Partner with Barnes and Noble on a built-in eBooks store.
Webcam: Video conferencing, support for Skype would certainly make for one hell of a launch. Can you see Jon Rubinstein starting up a video chat?
Support for assorted Bluetooth accessories such as keyboards, mice, etc.
WiFi Model, EVDO models
We could go on and on. Instead, we ask our readers to chip in and let us know how you would make the perfect webOS Pad. Who knows, maybe next year at CES we’ll get our wish. Dream big!
The webOS PDK, also known as the “plug-in development kit”, is the sole reason we’re starting to see all these amazing new games on webOS. However, up until now, the webOS PDK was distributed to a small group of developers. The big players such as EA and Gameloft have used their early access to deliver games like “Need for Speed”, “Let’s Golf” and “NFL 2010″.
PreCentral alerts us that Palm will offer up a public beta of the PDK in March. This is exciting for developers and will likely result in even more expansive games on the webOS platform. If the first batch of games are any indication, webOS owners are in for some great games in the not so distant future.
