Palm's webOS handset continues to make the celebrity rounds, recently in the hands of Howard Stern, Jimmy Fallon, and passed among film stars at this year's IFC Spirit Awards (although U2 and Stern both ended up with RIM). The LA Examiner reports that Angelina Jolie is the latest superstar to sport the Palm Pre (rumored to release May 17), while working on the set of her latest movie, Salt. Apparently she is a gadget fan, often visiting sites such as Brighthand, Gizmodo, and Engadget, and was able to secure an early evaluation unit from Sprint. One of the production assistants was able to have a chat with her, and reports:
"I asked her how she likes the phone...she went on about it for two minutes. She basically said she likes the software better than the iPhone, she likes the thumboard for texting (although the keys aren't big enough), and thinks the screen is beautiful but can be too easily scratched."
We're hoping she'll let Brad try it out for a second opinion. But besides the smaller centro-like keys (still widely preferred over a soft keyboard) and non-scratch resistant screen (also noted at a recent Pre appearance in China), celebrities seem to be giving universal praise for the Pre. But will that be enough for Palm? Douglas McIntyre, an analyst for 24/7 Wall Street thinks not. In a recent article titled "Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear", Palm appears as #10 on a list of companies that will vanish by 2010.
"Palm has been at death's door for some time", he states. Even though prospects have improved recently with the annoucement of the Pre, recent studies indicate that almost no iPhone or Blackberry users would be willing to make the switch.
Not only that, but Sprint has been losing subscribers (and revenue) for more than two years. Coupled with a poor Q3 revenue showing and remarketing Elevation shares to raise money, and you have a "disaster in the making", McIntyre predicts, and the severe economic downturn is not helping much, either. Talk about giving all the bad news at once.
But could there still be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Palm investors have reason to be optimistic, with shares up recently (reports Barron's) over new speculation involving Dell acquisitions. Yesterday it broke the $10 mark, with Merril Lynch analyst Vivek Arya upgrading Palm to "Buy" and pinning it with a $14 target, reports Precentral. "The company could ship as many as 6.2 million phones", he states, noting that a successful launch would mean the worst of Palm's cash woes will be behind them.
Palm also has developers on their side, with webOS energizing developers and preDevCamp (a worldwide webOS developer event) continuing to gear up. WebOS also continues to live up to the hype, and more developers are already starting to buckle down thanks to the Mojo SDK early access program. The inclusion of Flash support by the end of the year also gives Palm a one-up over some of its competitors, and the Palm OS Emulator has impressive backwards compatibility support, reports Brighthand.
So what do you think, will Palm be sitting pretty with the release of the Pre or could it be a disastrous year ahead for the smartphone maker? What celebrity should be next in line to help show off the Pre?
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