Investment Report Bullish on Palm's Prospects
Sagio Asset Management has announced that it has increased its ownership of Palm, Inc. this week from 5% to 6.3%. This comes after shares of PALM took a 5% drop in share price following investor concern over competition with the Motorola Q. Saigo has also released a very positive report on Palm's future prospects claiming that Palm is still undervalued and misunderstood by most market analysts. The report also speculates on Palm's upcoming smartphone releases this year.
Saigo claims, "While the weak markets have certainly not helped over the past few weeks, it was yesterday's downgrade by Bear Stearns coupled with the launch of Moto Q from Motorola that has hit PALM the hardest. The analysts now criticizing PALM are the same ones who warned of soft May quarterly guidance. PALM beat consensus in February and then guided above Street expectations for May. Sagio Asset Management believes the same dynamic is at play here. PALM is once again being misunderstood and underestimated. "
Sagio Asset Management has an expectation of 34% top-line growth in FY07 and believes that management will have plenty of wiggle room if it guided for 20% to 25% top line growth. It believes that PALM is worth $30/share by the end of '06 on conservative shipment scenarios, with very probably outcomes supporting a $50 stock price.
Saigo goes on to report... "Since the introduction of the revolutionary Treo 600, PALM has unveiled three completely new Treo platforms (i.e. 650, 700w, and 700p) running two different OS platforms, supporting 3G speeds, and spanning all major geographies and air interface standards. Later this year, PALM will unveil the Hollywood to target Europe with a GSM-based 3G smartphone in an attractive, antenna-less, Windows Mobile-powered package. PALM will also start selling the Low Rider to extend the appeal of the Treo's brand, power, and ease-of-use to the mass market. By contrast, NOK took until now to introduce the E61 messaging phone, and the MOTO Q was delayed numerous times in its two-year saga."
Sagio expects a string of positive catalysts to boost the company's stock price through out the remainder of the year:
- Q4Y06 earnings call in June - Sagio believes that PALM will offer FY07 top-line guidance ahead of the 16.3% growth consensus expectations.
- The launch of the Treo Hollywood in CY3Q06 - this antenna-less, 3G, Windows-powered smartphone will allow PALM to significantly grow its unit shipments by finally offering a compelling European phone.
- The announcement of major European carrier partnerships - the launch of the Hollywood will be an event ala 700w at Verizon Wireless with Microsoft and PALM. Sagio believes that Vodafone will become the Hollywood's first strategic carrier distributor.
- The launch of the Low Rider in CY3Q06/CY4Q06 - This launch will allow PALM to break into the mass-market with a price point around $200, reaching a broad swath of the consumer market while squashing those critics who argue that price competition will lead PALM's downfall.
- Strong May, August, and November earnings reports - Sagio believes that PALM will beat consensus estimates and guide above expectations for the August quarter. Moreover, success of the 700p at Sprint and Verizon, the launch of the Hollywood in Europe, and the introduction of a North American Hollywood in late '06 could add significant upside relative to current expectations.
PALM's strong '06 start should only get better as new devices help PALM to significantly expand volumes. Sagio believes that the 700p will be as, if not more popular, than the 700w due to the superiority of the LCD resolution and the ease-of-use of the PALM OS. Furthermore, as the Hollywood starts to move through the carrier distribution network and the Low Rider breaks into the consumer mass market, PALM's unit shipments could expand significantly above current levels. Furthermore, Sagio expects ultra-thin Treos to appear in 2007, allowing PALM to capture the fashion-conscious buyer.
Source: Saigo Press Release and SEC filing.
Note: Saigo Investments owns 6.3% of PALM stock.
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RE: New PDA's? Anyone? Anyone?
Is that actually prophesy or is it frustrated resignation?
--
PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???
Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
I'm absolutely floored!
Who would have EXPECTED such a stance!?
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their profits.
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
Please go here:
-- http://www.sagioinvest.com/
and look at the very top of your window - you will see (TITLE for you HTML weenies):
== "SAGIO Investments - alternative investment advisor,
== hedge fund,Geneva,Switzerland"
But thanks for trying to play.
Giggle.
[of course, Sagio is one of those dynamic orgs that change on the fly if necessary so this post is valid only at the time of the post!]
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
== "meta name="description" content="Sagio, headquartered in
== Geneva, is an investment adviser, that manages more than $100M
== in several hedge funds (Sniper, Longview), providing annualized
== returns in excess of 25% for its clients"..."
BTW - Sagio has more than $110 million of PALM alone (6.3 million shares times $17+/share) - if they manage "more than $100M" this suggests that they may just be somewhat overweighted in PALM, no?, for a "fund"...
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
of course they have a vested self interest to "pump and dump" the stock.
commoditization will be the killer.
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
Saigo is not a hedge fund.
Just trust me on this. (I think I may have a little more experience with hedge funds than you.)
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their profits.
RE: Bullish? Now THAT'S a surprise!
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their profits.
Lowrider
That's pretty damn cool. If Palm include even *some* of the media features that people around here have been begging for - standard 3.5mm headphone jack, built-in movie player and sync software etc - and if they get the look of it right, it could be quite a hot little item.
Very interesting indeed.
On a different topic, it's very disappointing that there's no hint at all of a PalmOS Hollywood. After all, the highly positive buzz for the 700p should prove that people really do love a non-MS solution. (No offense, Surur ;) )
Why aren't Palm even hinting at one? Ed Colligan said that the 700p was proof of their future commitment to PalmOS. And while the 700p is a nice upgrade to the 650, it's not the Treo's future. Hollywood-style designs are.
Hopefully they'll work out the 3G/UMTS Garnet issues soon, if that's what's holding them back.
This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good
RE: Lowrider
That is basically what the rumors are (see below). A lot of publications like PCworld etc have mentioned that in passing as well... At this point I'm not very confident we will see a FrankenGarnet verision of the Hollywood this year or if ever...
--------------------
Gaurav
Current devices: Treo 650 + Axim X50v
Device graveyard: Palm Vx, Cassiopeia E100, LG Phenom HPC, Palm M515, Treo 300, Treo 600
Moderator, Treocentral
RE: Lowrider
Hopefully they'll work out the 3G/UMTS Garnet issues soon
It's not really a matter of "working out issues," from my understanding. It's a matter that the UMTS standard requires something that Garnet is specifically architected *not* to deliver: run two applications simultaneously in two separate event loops--a phone application using the voice network and an application that is processing network data (like an email client or browser). Garnet only has one event loop, and while it has some limited ability to do stuff in the background (like play audio from a file) it has to bring one application down before it can launch another. This fundamental limitation of Garnet is the reason they're working on a Linux successor to Palm OS.
The first non-Windows Treo to run on a UMTS network will have Linux under the hood, not Palm OS Garnet.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Lowrider
So how do I manage to run other apps while on a phone call using my CDMA Treo 650?
What's inherently different about UMTS?
Also, I though the voice traffic coexisting with data traffic thing was resolved in the 700p (and with EVDO).
RE: Lowrider
Rumor: Hollywood to launch at the end of the year
http://www.palminsider.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=324
RE: Lowrider
Yes. I was aware of that (for 1xRTT). What about EVDO? I thought EVDO (and the 700p) supported both active data and voice.
Also, the original post was about event loops (implying that UMTS could not be supported on Garnet because Garnet didn't have preepmtive multitasking and thus could not support two apps at the same time).
Yet I can still switch to HandyShopper while on a phone call and I can still run MobileDB while Toccer is sitting in the background (so to speak) reading bytes from TCP sockets connected to toc.oscar.aol.com.
Clearly Garnet can cobble together sufficient multitasking for some things. What's so different about UMTS?
RE: Lowrider
In other words - no splitting of the atom here folks - the OS deals with the data channel and a seperate system / chip acts as the 'phone' (does the voice and re-routes the voice audio to the speaker and from the mic).
What is wrong with my picture here? where is the rocket science? This voice subsystem is something that is a commodity already - the same minimal voice capability in cheap-o phnones(remember that that is not including the radio itself - thats there already and is separate from voice encode / decode and audio routing that we are talking about).
RE: Lowrider
I'm working from memory here, so I may not be precisely correct, but as I recall it the EVDO standard doesn't allow for truly simultaneous voice and data connections, but it does improve the handling of connections. You can send or receive a phone call while not actively transmitting or receiving data, even if a data session is in progress. But it still has to suspend data transmissions to do so. UMTS doesn't have this restriction.
I don't know enough about the logistics to conclusively comment regarding UMTS/HSDPA on Palm OS.
Rumor: Hollywood to launch in 2012
RE: Lowrider
RE: Lowrider
A Palm OS Treo can be made to do UMTS. I would be surprised if Palm OS 'does voice' in the current Treo: if it's not already an independent subsystem (easy enough to do....) then is should be / could be.
The problem isn't solved by putting telephony into a subsystem (where I'm guessing it's probably been from the start). The problem is how that subsystem can be controlled from the user interface (screen and hardware) in a UMTS-compliant, multi-tasking manner. The Palm OS kernel has been able to multi-task since the first Pilot; it's the application shell that's single-tasking.
I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it seems likely to me that Palm sees the heroic effort to accomplish limited, hacked-in multi-tasking just to achieve UMTS compliance would be better put to developing a new Palm OS framework on a modern system architecture.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Lowrider
I don't know whether that homegrown system is considered "Plan A" or "Plan B" (with "A" being ALP)--perhaps Palm doesn't even know yet--but I have my suspicions.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Lowrider
Unless they decide to release a plain-old GSM Hollywood running Garnet. Unlikely I guess, but a man can dream.
This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good
RE: Lowrider
May You Live in Interesting Times
RE: Lowrider
RE: Lowrider
And I thought Marty Fouts (PenguinPowered) was just PLAYING dumb.
I had assumed Marty was just playing dumb, but I guess he really was just clueless all along.
It's truly amazing that ANYONE is surprised to hear that Palm is desperately scrambling to create their own OS. As I have said before, Palm played a high stakes poker match with its main asset - PalmOS - and their corporate games blew up in their face. Without control of its own smartphone OS, Palm is a sitting duck, waiting to be blown out of the water as soon as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, etc. figure out the secret sauce needed to create a good smartphone. The Treo 600 was the first good smartphone and it came out way back in Fall 2003, finally giving Palm/Handspring a foot in the door with its new masters: The Carriers. With Palm having failed to advance the Treo 600 design in the past 3 years, it is inevitable that in 2006 the competition will finally begin to demolish Palm by slamming The Carriers' door shut on Palm's face for good. Motorola's aggressive pricing for its new smartphone is the first serious shot across Palm's bow. What will happen when Palm has to slash its (ridiculuosly greedy) prices in order to compete? Motorola can afford a 6 month smartphone price war to maximize marketshare/mindshare. A price war would quickly baknrupt Palm. Meanwhile, Nokia's U-boats are busy attaching a couple of megaton bombs to HMS Palm's hull. D Day is coming in 3 months. Any guesses who's going to win THIS war? Eric "RatBoy" Benhamou knows, and he's not telling. Dead men tell no tales...
PalmOS 5 is a lame duck OS that (to mix avian metaphors) has become an albatross around Palm's neck. There is no future in trying to further hack an already hacked-up OS. PalmOS 5 has become a deck of cards that was built on an unsteady foundation. The fact that it hasn't already completely collapsed is a testament to the efforts of Handspring's codemonkeys circa 2001 - 2003.
Palm made a ton of money from unfortunate naive investors by engaging in a sleazy corporate shell game of bogus splits, spin-offs and name "sales" and ALMOST pulled it off by re-acquiring PalmOS for peanuts. Benhamou would have fit in well with the good ole boys at Enron... (Un?)Fortunately, their scam came to a screeching halt when Access bought PalmSource and quickly killed off PalmOS. Ooops!
Sorry, Virginia, but their are not going to be any further advances to PalmOS seen from Access/PalmSource. The platform died the day Palm allowed themselves to be outbid by a truly shocking dark horse named Access. Of course, the fact that Palm's "leadership" thought companies like Motorola, Nokia, etc would have stood idly by and let Palm re-acquire PalmSource for nothing shows how stupid/arrogant/incompetent Palm's decision makers are.
Previously Palm had no contingency plan re: its OSes, as the brilliant strategy of offering Windows Mobile as a no brainer quick fix and re-acquiring PalmOS for total control of its own smartphone OS would have allowed Palm to have their cake and eat it too. Palm entered full "disaster mode" last fall, and has been desperately trying to come up with its own proprietary OS. Unfortunately, years of neglect mean Palm has no in-house codemonkey talent in the troop capable of answering the bell. Boo hoo hoo! Way to go Palm... Loading up on talent like HandEra/Tapwave/StyleTap codemonkeys, CESD, TealPoint, Chris Antos, Picard, etc while pruning the dozens of "dead wood" branches currently at Palm would have solved all of Palm's app and UI headaches. If Palm decided to give up its plan to own its own smartphone OS, not much more hiring would have been necessary. Since time is of the essence, a roll-your-own PalmLinux might be a bit much to aim for given Palm's shameful lack of skilled codemonkeys.
At this point, Palm's best - and most realistic - option is to throw all of its remaining resources behind Windows Mobile, making a number of further customizations to the UI, giving users a more "Palm-like" (i.e. intuitive) experience out of the box, and at the same time offering a bug-free clone of StyleTap Platform either as part of Palm's Windows Mobile distro or as a free download available to users. I suggested this last Fall to someone who matters at Palm and they laughed, saying this was an absurd proposition. Well guess what? They aren't laughing now...
TVoR
RE: Lowrider
Anyway, Skippy, I'm not surprised that Palm is doing their own distro, I'm just reluctant to admit it.
Especially since most of the people working on Linux for PalmSource US have bailed and, as far as I know, none of them have gone to Palm.
Guess the A in Alp stands for Asia, after all.
May You Live in Interesting Times
RE: Lowrider
While future competition is indeed going to be tough for Palm, I'm hesitant to write them off just yet. PalmOS 5 may be a developer's nightmare, but hopefully the user experience will be greatly improved by the extra memory that's been added to the 700p. If they can put an end to seemingly-random resets, then Garnet will remain a viable platform.
There's always a future in a non-Microsoft solution. (Yeah yeah, I know... tell that to Netscape.) Look at the buzz and online reviews for the 700w vs. the 700p. People are excited about the 700p, much moreso than they were about the 700w when it was announced - despite the fact it's still running buggy ol' Garnet.
Finally, the supposed leaked Hollywood pics (http://tinyurl.com/jzzhe) show that Palm has not turned a complete blind eye to style.
I wouldn't write them off yet. Maybe this time next year, if phones like the Q and E61 kill them. We'll see...
This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good
RE: Lowrider
How about this time next month?
May You Live in Interesting Times
RE: Lowrider
Well, I suppose if these other phones were *really* good, it could happen. But it sounds unlikely at face value.
(sorry if I missed a joke there...)
This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good
RE: Lowrider
I think he means with the release of devices such as the Q the Treo is set to lose major mind share, especially with the amount of promotion we can expect Motorola to do (10x as much as Palm). Palm will have to compete on style and price, and they are not good at doing either.
Surur
They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
RE: Lowrider
This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good
Palm is stumbling + PalmSource ready to close up shop in the USA
The smarter codemonkeys saw this coming last year and deserted the sinking ship in late 2005. Less intelligent codemonkeys didn't leave until Spring. (Remind me: when was it that Marty Fouts left?) With Access having now pulled the plug on PalmOS they are no longer even attempting to maintain the façade that the PalmOS platform is still business as usual.
Palm is wasting its time persuing its inhouse PalmLinux dreams. Colligan & Co. need to start making some more pragmatic decisions ASAP:
1) PalmOS 5 could be hacked to remain in service for CDMA smaretphones for another 2 years if Palm put a little effort into fixing some of the nastier code Garnet currently contains. Unfortunately, CDMA is primarily a USA standard - most other countries prefer GSM, so if Palm intends to sell to a bigger market they need GSM devices as well.
2) PalmOS 5 will NOT support the new high speed GSM data standards any time in the next couple of years - if ever. A complete rewrite of PalmOS could have allowed for this support to be included, but remember what happened to Cobalt?
3) Maintaining backward compatibility with almost all legacy PalmOS apps is actually no longer important. The PalmOS app library is now (in 2006) more of a marketing tool than it is of real importance. If one cuts through the SPIN and BS it's obvious that Windows Mobile's app library has already equalled - if not surpassed - the PalmOS library in terms of current, well-coded apps. How many of Palm's 30,000 available apps are useless, throwaway "list"/database apps coded by hacks within a few hours? How many apps in the library are abandonware dating back to PalmOS 3 (or earllier!) that barely - if at all - function on new devices. Approximately 1/4 of the apps I use are no longer updated, with several developers having either simply lost interest in coding for PalmOS or gone out of business (it's almost impossible to make a decent living selling apps to consumers given how much high quality freeware is available and how easy it is to crack PalmOS apps).
4) Since Access has abandoned development of PalmOS, it no longer makes sense for a manufacturer to commit to producing devices running an abandonware OS. It would be like Dell suddenly selling its latest PCs loaded with OS/2. So in 2006, are there ANY advantages for a manufacturer to choose PalmOS? There used to be quite a few - but most have now either disappeared or are easily nullifed by workarounds:
- Intuitive PIM
Incredibly, after 10 years PalmOS STILL has by far the best UI for simple PIM functions, yet no one selling Windows Mobile software has been smart enough to see the huge potential market for an app/UI layer offering Windows Mobile users an experience similar to PalmOS PIM. Palm could easily create a "Palm-like" set of PIM apps for Windows Mobile and either negotiate with Microsoft to have a customized distro or else offer the apps as a "Palm OS Classic" skin for Windows Mobile. This isn't exactly rocket science.
- Available advanced PIM
While one of the main reasons I stuck with PalmOS over the years was the power of replacement PIM apps like DateBk3/4/5, 3rd party Windows Mobile PIM apps like Pocket Informant have as much - and typically more - power as their PalmOS counterparts.
- Better syncing with Microsoft Office apps/data (ironic, isn't it?)
Word, Excel, Outlook, Project, PowerPoint, etc all can be made to easily sync with PalmOS RELIABLY. I still run a 6 year old abandoned app called URLSync (the best PDA Toolbox app ever made!) that syncs my desktop Internet Explorer favorites list with my various PalmOS PDAs. (The developer kindly provided an acquaintance of mine with the keygen needed to register the desktop component/conduit of URLSync, so I've been able to keep using it as I upgraded my devices over the years.) Microsoft's syncing and backup abilities are much less reliable. Third party apps solve some of Windows Mobile headaches, but not all. BIG advantage: PalmOS
- Reliable alarms
Again, another BASIC function that PalmOS has always got right, but Windows Mobile always screwed up. Current workarounds have made Windows Mobile more reliable, but I still don't trust it.
- Niche apps
Because PalmOS is easy to code for and has been around for a long time there are a huge number of apps available that either were made by hobby coders to solve a personal need or were made to target a small subset of users (teachers, students, physicians, dieters, lawyers, etc.) Want a calculator using Roman numerals? A clock that counts down the remaining days until Halloween? An app for listing the hours your favorite stores are open? A (very extensive) unit converter? A medical formula program? An app for performing wireless queries for driving directions, phone numbers, addresses? A loan calculator? A sunrise/sunset calculator? An app for factoring numbers? PalmOS has you covered with FREEWARE apps that do all this and a ton of other (often obscure) functions. Only problem is that Windows Mobile not only is catching up but typically has equivalent apps that are much better-featured than their PalmOS counterparts. Comparing the difference between the PalmOS and Windows Mobile versions of apps like Resco Photo Viewer and Resco Explorer underscores how far behind the curve PalmOS has fallen. At least my copy of Manana still works and has no Windows Mobile equivalent...
- Better hardware running PalmOS
The Samsung i500 smartphone, Sony CLIE UX50/TH55/VZ90 are PalmOS devices that were better made than competing Windows-based devices at the time. Only problem is that they're all discontinued. Furthermore, with the release of the Treo 700w, the sole remaining PalmOS hardware advantage has evaporated.
- Better push email solutions.
Looks like Microsoft Exchange update is about to wipe out another of the PalmOS advantages. Of course, Palm never exactly did anything with the 3 year jump they had on Microsoft now, did they...
- Ease of coding
With every new Palm device breaking half the apps out there it looks like many developers are ready to throw in the towel. Who would ever have thought PalmOS would become LESS backwards compatible than Windows Mobile?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PalmOS has become like a gangrenous limb for Palm. Palm needs to amputate that diseased limb before it ends up killing the company. Colligan is now Gates' biotch and it's time he bent over, hiked up his dress and took it like a man. Remember, Ed: just think of the Queen (Yankowski).
Like Krusty the Clown says: "Don't balme me! I didn't do it!
http://www.thesimpsons.com/bios/bios_townspeople_krusty.htm
TVoR/Carl Y.
PalmSource Deadpool: David Schlesinger ('stonemonkey') R.I.P.?
Vicious insults being hurled at PalmSource leadership in private.
Access shutting down USA operations and diverting operations to Nanjing, China.
Question: What's a dorky Japanophile PalmSource manager to do?
Answer: Seppuku.
Till now I thought
that death befell
the untalented alone.
If those with talent, too, must die
surely they make a better manure?
Time to sharpen that butter knife...
Hugs & Kisses.
I am. Ronin.
RE: Lowrider
Mr Gates left a voice mail for you.
He said you can turn your timesheet into the Redmond office.
Oh, he said yo keep up the good work.
RE: Lowrider
Of course half the people on this board were saying the same thing about EVDO. Remember all of the "no more PalmOS Treos" crap that was going on after the 700W announcement.
For now, I will assume that the purveyors of doom and gloom are once again understimating the extensability of Garnet.
After all, they've all been wrong before.
RE: Lowrider
late 2005.
PalmSource is definitely not ready to close up shop. They are hiring apace, and they have plenty of work for the people they're hiring.
Palm is wasting its time persuing its inhouse PalmLinux dreams.
If they are persuing one, they're definitely wasting time. They'd be much better off collaborationg with MontaVista or Access.
They should do the aps, and leave the low level OS distro to people who are in that business.
May You Live in Interesting Times
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New PDA's? Anyone? Anyone?
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