News Flash: palmOne to Develop a "Family of Smart Phone Solutions"

Todd Bradley, CEO of palmOne, today announced in its Quarterly Earnings Conference Call that palmOne "will continue to invest in smart phone development" and that the intention is to "develop a family of smart phone solutions".

Financial results for the quarter are extremely positive with revenue growth of 62 percent, gross margin rising to 33.3 percent and net income for the quarter was $19.6 million.

Among others this quarter was a successful one as: palmOne announced an expansion of its relationship with T-Mobile, bringing the Treo(TM) 600 smartphone to the carrier's retail customers and online store in addition to its existing business channel, and a new carrier relationship with Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier. Today, Treo smartphones are sold by the five largest carriers in the United States, in addition to leading carriers around the world. Since the quarter ended, palmOne announced a second carrier in Canada -- Bell Mobility -- and its first in Spain -- Vodafone.

Treo 600 unit shipments for the quarter were 273,000 (81% sequential growth) this bringing the total number of Treo 600 units sold since launch at 651,000.

Bradley strongly and repeatedly emphasized the importance of its large and growing developer community with its ""rich and diverse" applications offerings and the "open architecture" of the PalmOS.  Among others he singled out GoodLink which services over 2,400 organisations using the Treo 600.

An analyst questioned the management team about its "problems in Europe" - an issue which was recently raised by eWeek (mysteriously this excellent article is no longer available) and Forbes.  It is no secret that Treo 600 sales outside the US have performed poorly and according to palmOne CEO Bradley this is due to stronger brand recognition in the US and thus less traction in Europe.  We at Treonauts don't buy it and would argue that palmOne's brand in Europe is very strong and that the real cause of slow sales there are related to poor marketing on the part of the company and its carrier partner Orange.  All of this can be changed and hopefully some efforts are being made inside the organisation to remedy this.

The question was also raised as to palmOne's intentions in the "Portable Digital Media" space and here the CEO strongly backed the "opportunities in digital content - with MP3, video and pictures".

Related News:
CNN Money PalmOne soars on swing to profit
Reuters PalmOne Posts Profit on Handheld Sales