WSJ Posts Palm CEO's Letter to Employees
The Wall Street Journal has published a memo sent out to all Palm employees today by CEO Jon Rubinstein. The letter goes into more detail behind they days financial readjustment press release and provides some background on Palm's current initiatives to drive sales. The letter also discloses that Verizon felt the webOS launch was below expectations, but remains committed to working with Palm.
The full letter is posted at this Digits blog post at the WSJ and is mirrored below.
Team,
This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. 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. 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.
I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March. In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales.
Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales. To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations-all getting the word out about Palm.
All of these efforts are examples of how we are working to accelerate adoption and grow distribution of webOS. In the next few weeks, your management will work with you to make sure your priorities are laser-focused, primarily on helping to increase sales, improve product quality and differentiate the Palm product experience.
Our goals are taking longer than expected to achieve, but I am still confident that our talented team has what it takes to get the job done.
We'll schedule an all-hands meeting after our earnings announcement in March, and I'll be happy to answer your questions.
Go team!!!
jon
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RE: Captain is going down with his ship
Unbeknownst to Ruby, Palm employees have begun initiating Project JumpShip.
This is going to get interesting...
RE: Captain is going down with his ship
RE: Captain is going down with his ship
Ruby is telling everyone to work harder (as if they aren't already) while he decides who to layoff in order to save cash.
What a putz!
With his bleeding edge management skills, it's easy to see why Apple drop-kicked him.
RE: Captain is going down with his ship
Apple hasn't skipped a beat since they got rid of this putz.
RE: Captain is going down with his ship
E-T
RE: Captain is going down with his ship
E-T
Guess the OTR Global reports was absolutely correct, eh?
So why did Palm release that fluff about "in anticipation of the Chinese New Years" at all?
Bet the answer is more interesting than anything already out.
RE: Guess the OTR Global reports was absolutely correct, eh?
"Chapter 1... Page 1... Paragraph 1: What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?... Money."
we'll have to recent check insider transaction stock sales when the information is available.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=PALM
RE: Guess the OTR Global reports was absolutely correct, eh?
RE: Guess the OTR Global reports was absolutely correct, eh?
Meanwhile, I still haven't seen a single webOS device in the wild.
Asia Pacific
Now I wish they can survive until they release in Asia Pacific. Fingers crossed.
--
With great power comes great responsiblity.
RE: Asia Pacific
E-T
Just one question
RE: Just one question
RE: Just one question
E-T
RE: Just one question
ctp89 wrote:
Seriously. Some of the comments here seem to be almost gleeful of the possibility that more people will lose their jobs, investors will lose their money, another innovative American company will die and one of the best most competitive products out there will drop from the market.
The comments here are about Palm getting complacent and losing its position as the leader. The whining is about them losing their identity and and them trying to ape that fruity company. It is about the frustration experienced by their loyal customers that they have constantly ignored due to their cavalier attitude and them going from an innovating pioneer to an also ran struggling to survive. Nobody really wants them to disappear, they want them to wake up and give us something useful with proper thought behind it instead of the sub-par OS and hardware that they've been pushing.
While webos is interesting, it doesn't do what I was accustomed to being able to do, and when it does, it is sub par to an ancient OS. Some of the things they tout as features, I consider as drawbacks and will need to find a way to disable before I give them a chance. Personally as things stand, I'd rather dump them altogether and move on, but I still have a sliver of hope that they'll get their act together. If they fold, I might be induced to finally move on. Or I might hope that their former OS makes it onto some decent hardware like Aceeca has been promising. And then there is always Android once it matures and improves.
RE: Just one question
E-T
RE: Just one question
e_tellurian wrote:
It hurts to know those that helped to build Palm are feeling the change in such a drastic fashion. What makes Palm a pioneer are all the good people that have helped to make Palm the brand that inspires innovation. I sincerely hope people are not left behind as Palm changes. Palm needs those people and those people need Palm ... team work.E-T
I seriously doubt that most of them are still there at Palm. Some of them would have left over the years when management was clueless. And some of them would have been in the OS group that was spun off.
RE: Just one question
E-T
RE: Just one question
BaalthazaaR wrote:
ctp89 wrote:
Seriously. Some of the comments here seem to be almost gleeful of the possibility that more people will lose their jobs, investors will lose their money, another innovative American company will die and one of the best most competitive products out there will drop from the market.
The comments here are about Palm getting complacent and losing its position as the leader. The whining is about them losing their identity and and them trying to ape that fruity company. It is about the frustration experienced by their loyal customers that they have constantly ignored due to their cavalier attitude and them going from an innovating pioneer to an also ran struggling to survive. Nobody really wants them to disappear, they want them to wake up and give us something useful with proper thought behind it instead of the sub-par OS and hardware that they've been pushing.While webos is interesting, it doesn't do what I was accustomed to being able to do, and when it does, it is sub par to an ancient OS. Some of the things they tout as features, I consider as drawbacks and will need to find a way to disable before I give them a chance. Personally as things stand, I'd rather dump them altogether and move on, but I still have a sliver of hope that they'll get their act together. If they fold, I might be induced to finally move on. Or I might hope that their former OS makes it onto some decent hardware like Aceeca has been promising. And then there is always Android once it matures and improves.
True - Palm got complacent and lost its leadership. It's amazing they've lasted this long having gone through numerous aquisitions and most boneheadedly losing ownership of their own OS. However they've made a huge effort in the last year and compared to the current competition, I believe the Pre is the best smartphone out there. Blackberry - based on an outdated Java OS and reliant on RIM datacenters (which go down now and then). Their devices are huge and geeky. iPhone - expensive, single-carrier, no-multitasking, annoying screen-based keyboard and totally locked down by Apple. Android - no hardware or interface consistency and again locked into a huge corporate ecosystem ("Don't be evil?" no, just be Google). What else - Windows mobile?
All I'm saying is that despite past missteps - Palm now has a great product - small, stylish, open and capable. And WebOS 1.4 is smooth, stable and fast. Palm just needs to step up and get that message out there.
RE: Just one question
E-T
RE: Just one question
ctp89 wrote:
However they've made a huge effort in the last year and compared to the current competition, I believe the Pre is the best smartphone out there.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion there, but this is not a grade school competition. There is no 'A' for effort. If I saw it meeting my needs, I would buy it.
ctp89 wrote:
Blackberry - based on an outdated Java OS and reliant on RIM datacenters (which go down now and then).
Palms servers haven't been around long enough to have a chance to go down. However, unlike RIM, the Palm phones practically become bricks if they can't communicate with the Palm servers. But we can just wait and see about that one. To make things worse, all your data resides on the Palm server, With RIM, you can have your own server even if the encrypted communication is routed through their infrastructure.
ctp89 wrote:
iPhone - expensive, single-carrier, no-multitasking, annoying screen-based keyboard and totally locked down by Apple.
No argument there... even a free iPhone wouldn't interest me.
ctp89 wrote:
Android - no hardware or interface consistency and again locked into a huge corporate ecosystem ("Don't be evil?" no, just be Google). What else - Windows mobile?
As much as I dislike Macroshaft Winhosed/winblows/windos, I would consider that before Palms infrastructure design. And now for Android. Yeah it has its issues, but it is also rapidly evolving. What you call a lack of consistency, I call variety. There is no one form factor that meets everyone's needs. The same goes for a UI. The varied combination increases the likelihood of finding one that meets my needs.
ctp89 wrote:
All I'm saying is that despite past missteps - Palm now has a great product - small, stylish, open and capable. And WebOS 1.4 is smooth, stable and fast. Palm just needs to step up and get that message out there.
I think the damn thing is too small. I think it needs to be bigger if it is to be more than just a phone. And the slider is not designed right. It should not get that loose after being used for a while.
Anyway that was more than the two cents that I intended to throw in.
Palm's Major Credibility Problem
"If the company knew three weeks ago that Verizon and Sprint were stopping orders, why not just announce it then? Why dribble the news out, and attribute a manufacturing stoppage to the Chinese New Year, which would ultimately not pass the smell test since the work holiday typically only lasts a week and Palm's manufacturing has been suspended for the entire month?"
"Management has a serious credibility issue, I'm told, and this only makes it substantially worse. Another told me that Palm's attempts to throw investors off the scent of an order slowdown by its major customers by connecting a manufacturing stoppage to the Chinese New Year isn't nearly as forthcoming as the company ought to be. (He had more colorful language to share, but that's what he meant.)"
http://www.cnbc.com/id/35607982
RE: Palm's Major Credibility Problem
E-T
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Captain is going down with his ship
You once shined brightly but now, the incompetencies have have finally caught up to you and done you in.
It would be wise for anyone from management to not list Palm on their resume. That alone would have me file it in the circular file cabinet.
From a former Palm-developer, you will not be missed. Good riddance.