Several studies were reported on today, helping to give smartphone maker Palm a boost before the Pre is released. TMC reported in a February study that smartphone market share worldwide increased from 26 to 33 percent. In total, an estimated 171 million smartphones were sold worldwide in 2008.
OS Attack broke the findings down with the latest US reports, with the iPhone capturing 50 percent of the major mobile OS share, and Palm OS in forth place with 7 percent. RIM, Windows Mobile, and Android were second, third, and fifth place, respectively. "Palm webOS is for sure going to capture a large part of the mobile OS market", they state on the upcomiing Pre. Palm investor Roger Mcnamee also discussed the smartphone market in an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month.
webOS will definitely shake up the rankings when it arrives, but how does the hype for the Pre compare with the iPhone back in 2007? Tinycomb reported on the latest charts comparing current web traffic for Sprint and Palm with previous traffic for AT&T and Apple leading up to the iPhone:
The Pre managed to nab about 400k weekly views early on, with the iPhone getting as much as 600k. After the initial surge, traffic is hovering around 100k, indicating that there is still strong interest for the Pre. Apple's traffic subsequently dropped to around 200k. It's important to note that although numbers for the iPhone seem higher, there are a couple reasons why Palm is holding strong in comparison:
- The smartphone market was much less crowded in 2007 when the iPhone appeared, and it was Apple's first entry into the market, enhancing anticipation for any new device.
- Apple.com was factored in, which was already a top 100 website; a lot of traffic was likely for other products.
So we can assume Palm still has the wind at its back. With the Palm CEO envisioning an entire product line built on webOS and many analysts suggesting Dell should buy Palm, the company is quickly becoming a hot commodity, even with numerous articles drawing attention to upcoming iPhone 3.0 software.
Recent reports from Wall Street confirm Palm is holding strong. ZDNet reports that 8 analysts now rate Palm shares a "buy", 13 analysts rating "hold", and one a "strong buy". This is up from just two analysts rating "buy" three months ago. A Deutsche Bank analyst also raised his target for Palm to $12 (from $10) yesterday, which further bodes well for Palm shares.
It's also interesting to note that Palm is the sixth most heavily shorted company as of Tuesday, which puts the weight on Palm's shoulders for a successful launch of the Pre.
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