Palm Hires New SVP of Product Development

Oh brother.

Sounds like excellent news. Take a look at Palm hires over the last 12 months:

Marc Blanc
Paul Mercer
Jon Rubinstein
Mike Bell

The last two can also bring more people from Apple, and trust me, they will only take the best

I just hope Jeff Hawkins will spend more time with Palm so this really makes a dream team

What are the chances Palm will pull out the same trick as Apple in 2003-2007 - stock from 6.5 to 200 in 4 years (Palm is at 5 right now...)

New Palm OS device by end 2008

I am SeldomVisitor and only SeldomVisitor here - the user ID "hengeem" here is some loser named "Something Lyons" who is somewhat obsessed with me.

But I'll assume you meant to address that question to me!

Yes, of course I'm a Palm-pessimist still. I strongly believe the price of Palm stock will fall to almost net value then Palm will either get bought totally by that silent Elevation Partner partner that originaly got cold feet or it will get bought piecemeal.

I certainly do NOT think it has even the slightest chance of succeeding until it has been reduced to noise-level staff - which is the same thing as failing.

The competition is MASSIVE, RICH, MANY, and ALREADY producing the devices that Palm is promising sometime NEXT YEAR.

Good luck to them - I literally wish them no ill will - I simply think they haven't got a snowball's chance in hell.

No kidding.

[but, note - as with a cast of thousands - I was TOTALLY floored by the outrageous purchase of PalmSource by ACCESS (a move that appears still to have been a bad one, BTW). Having been SO WRONG about the value of PalmSource to "anyone", I easily could be totally wrong about the value of Palm to "anyone". But...please ALSO note that Elevation Partners has literally lost HALF their investment already so maybe it was THEY who made the mistake]

Nah, not me - I've been to the Palo Alto region only twice - once to take a two-week course on the software and hardware of a then-state-of-the-art graphics display/processor and that was in 1980 or so (*), and once about 10 years ago (I think) to visit for a weekend my then-spouse who was taking mandated orientation classes at PeopleSoft (that was nice - PeopleSoft paid for MY airfare to and from (from Northern Virginia) for the weekend!).

Do not confuse having fun with the bozos over on Yahoo with any hatred toward Palm. Over there I have a consistent agenda of countering the mostly-groundless cheerleading posts of those who have a material reason for pumping the stock. Over HERE I discuss real world items, admittedly still with a Palm-pessimist POV, of course, but I don't tend to carry an agenda here, merely providing links to information to comment anew or in reply to someone else's comment.

That is, unless you think my name is Ken.

Giggle.

=========

(*) That was truly a cool time - pre-just-about-everything where one DID have to know the hardware down to the sub-bit level (TTL in this case!) and the software one studied for these guys was machine language, not even Assembler, based.

SV, there is one thing many are forgetting about Palm in the competitive PDA/Smartphone market - the Zen of Palm. It's easy, logical and broad. Without a real user experience that provides everything the power user looks for but with "ease", the rest of the glitz of "new this" and "new that" wears off. I have tried WM5 & WM6 products and an iPhone to replace my T680. Windows Mobile and iPhone require too many clicks, too few features or too much head-scratching. They just don't meet my needs. My T680, even with its hiccups and ancient OS, remains the easiest, full-functioning product for my needs. Sure, I wish I had WiFi and the ability to surf & talk simo. But those are not the ultimate difference makers for me because I can still get the same work done & more, even if slower surf at times. If Palm can launch a new 3G/4G potent OS that delivers all the zen and little things that have matured through the old Palm OS. They will scream forward again! Count on it.

I wrote here (and similarly elsewhere):

> ...But...please ALSO note that Elevation Partners has literally lost
> HALF their investment already so maybe it was THEY who made the mistake...

This is very VERY wrong and I regret not thoroughly reading terms of their purchase more thoroughly - all my statements about this were based off the "common stock" price changes, not terms of THEIR "preferred stock".

In particular, Elevation Partners is essentially GUARANTEED their investment back no matter what, pretty much.

That is, if PALM is liquidated and its net worth is greater or equal to $325 million, Elevation Partners is GUARANTEED to get their $325 million dollars back regardless what the stock price is at the time. And ONLY =after= they get their money back do run-of-the-mill shareholders get something back. So if PALM drops BELOW $325 million in net worth and is liquidated, Elevation Partners gets it ALL (and less than $325 million net worth and liquidation is the ONLY case where Elevation Partners loses out).

FYI - PALM's net worth, at least accroding to one site, is well under $325 million at this time so run-of-the-mill shares are under the added risk of GUARANTEED absolute TOTAL LOSS should PALM get liquidated. And thus Elevation Partners is down about 1/3rd their investment right now, not half.

Here's a link to a Yahoo post that itself (at least indirectly) links to other things:

-- http://tinyurl.com/yq5vft

It is interesting, huh? Probably what happened is the CFO or CEO read a message board somewhere then went ofver to the NYT and said "Oh for Pete's sake - get something out on our official unofficial blog NOW and fire something off direct to the NYT, too!"

A comment on one those "articles" is what drove me to re-read the LARGE filing made by PALM about The Transaction and, TADA!, I found out that Elevation Partners is sitting pretty while shareholders are in relatively deep doo-doo.

SV, of course, which is why I preceed the wag mention with 'speculating'...

I don't always catch all the comments, in the future if you want to bring news like this to our attention kindly drop a note in the news tips form.

Yeah, Ryan, SV is right. That's the reason I haven't sent in any news tips lately; it's just impossible to see that "News tips" link in the Main Menu of the home page.

Probably the easiest way for you to solve all this website's problems is to hire SV as a consultant so that he can make sure everything he personally might ever want to do or notice has a link placed in the most prominent location possible. You might want to highlight that area further by calling it something like "SV's Handpicked Links" so that he gets all the credit he's got coming for making this site truly awesome. Also, consider placing another link box permanently at the top of the centre column that displays a collection of links to the very best of SV's previous posts on this site so that we can all more easily jump back to all of those incredibly profound words of wisdom. That would be so much more convenient for him as well as the rest of us.

Thanks for considering making these important changes. I'm afraid that unless you do something quick, PIC is never going to become a truly good website.


"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)