Gisteren heb ik voor het eerst in 5 kwartalen het gesprek niet live gevolgd, maar je kunt het hier letterlijk teruglezen van wat er gezegd is:
PALM Q2 FY08 (Qtr End 11/30/07) Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha
Als ik zo de reacties van de analysten bekijk vandaag in de media, zijn ze ondanks de verlieswaarschuwing van vorige week alsnog
flink geschrokken van de cijfers van Palm.
Palm's
aandelenkoers is weer eens 8% gekelderd in de pre-market vandaag. Dus eh, laten we hopen dat PalmOS II op Linux iets is volgend jaar, áls ze het al op tijd uit kunnen spugen.
Maar dan nog he, het leven is wat je gebeurt, terwijl je bezig bent andere plannen te maken. De laatste jaren hadden zoveel beter geweest kunnen zijn voor Palm-gebruikers als het management van Palm niet zo'n eenzijdige, gestoorde visie op de markt had en zich zo krampachtig had vastgehouden aan het oude PalmOS 5 uit 2002 die al jaren geleden vervangen had moeten worden.
Zie ook hier, als Ed Colligan in feite zegt dat de productvertraging van de Treo 755p komt, doordat ze nog met een oud, houtje-touwtje besturingssysteem (PalmOS 5) aan het werken zijn, en dat daardoor certificeringen vaak wat moeizamer gaan vergeleken met nieuwere OS'sen (zoals Windows Mobile):
Citaat:
Michael Abramsky - RBC Capital Markets
Thanks very much. The manufacturing and product qualification issues that you talked about, they seem a little surprising in view of the fact that you have already been inthe game serving carriers, making SmartPhones, for some time, particularly since the product qualifications related to 755P and not the Centro which is more of a newer, seems to be a bit of a newer design. So shouldn’t these be resolved by now? How significant arethe problems behind those issues and what is your effort underway to resolve them?
Ed Colligan
Well Mike, I think they should be resolved by now. I’m as disappointed as you are in not being able to deliver this product. There’s nothing in my mind that’s an acceptable excuse for it. We should have done it. The reality is one of the things we’re dealing with that I think is reasonably unique relative to at least the SmartPhone suppliers is we have an older operating system here that is sometimes in certain multi-tasking situations is challenged relative to standard network performance issues. It is not challenged from the standpoint of end-user functionality and what end-users seein the product. In fact the Centro that runs the Palm OS is an incredibly stable, well-received, well-liked product. But when you get into the network certification area, and you’re testing against standard devices that the carriers use as kind of reference devices or benchmark devices, some of those do have real time operating systems and multi-tasking situations that allow them to perform certain network operations more efficiently. We’ve gotten caught up on that. We should be over the top of dealing with those issues. We do everything we can to work with the certification houses atthe carriers to make sure that it doesn’t happen, that we don’t miss deadlines. In this particular instance we weren’t able to get over the top on that. Now there are real issues that exist that are still in bug databases and things that are going on that we have to come through and make sure they’re not real issues before we’re going to ship the product and that’s really what happened here. There were things that were reported towards the end. It turned out that they were not issues and the product and the quality product is shipping and it is something that could have in hindsight shipped earlier, but that’s not what we were able to do without chasing and bringing all those things to ground. I think one of the issues is we have a reasonably narrow product line today and so one miss with one carrier hasa big impact on us. We have to build a broader array of products. We have to get more consistent about it. We have to get to the next generation operating system so that we don’t have some of those underlying issues from a network performance perspective and that’s what we’re doing.
Maar goed. Ed voorspelt ook grote dingen voor de toekomst:
Citaat:
Ed Colligan
Absolutely. We’re done with adjustments. That’s not happening anymore. The products we’re working on areall breakthrough form factors and designs. There are certain areas where you are extending a product line or there’s existing product line and we’re taking it to the next step. You don’t want to throw out thebaby with the bathwater and we’re going “We’ll extend that design center.” But we’re working on absolutely breakthrough designs, breakthrough user experience, breakthrough UI and other functionality on next generation systems, so we’re as I said we’re not stopping at anything short of revolutionary and fantastic design on at least our next generation platform products and in addition to that we will continue to deliver products on the Windows Mobile platform again that we’re driving towards world-class design on and nothing short of that so that’s what we’re working on and you’ll have to see those things and make that judgment when they come out. We also feel like we’ve set a very compelling price point with Centro. It has been really well-received inthe marketplace. That’s innovation ina different way, taking a lot of functionality and packaging itin a compelling package at a great price point. We will continue to do that as well.
Het probleem is dat ik hem twee jaar geleden ook heb gehoord over een fantastisch nieuw breakthrough besturingssysteem die echt in 2007 uit zou komen met super nieuwe smartphones.
En nog ff het stukkie over Europa:
Citaat:
Jeff Kvaal - Lehman Brothers
Thanks very much. Ed, I was wondering, it sounds as though you are planning to get back into Europe a little bit. Certainly that would seem acost call. Could you give us a little sense of visibility and the confidence that you have in your re-entry to Europe? Thank you.
Ed Colligan
The re-entry to Europe isn’t really a re-entry. Let’s just say our continued performance inEurope. I think we’ve struggled. There’s no question that we don’t have the brand presence there that we have here. We don’t have the scale there that we have here. We’ve had a bit of starts and stops in some of those product launches and we could do better there. We’re going to continue to try. I’m not satisfied with what has happened there. I think one of the things we see there that is quite different than here is pretty broadly different demand for the types of products that sell there. If you look for a broad-based QWERTY product, forward-facing QWERTY products like ours, we actually do quite well. Unfortunately the total volume is about 5% of what it is in theUS. The QWERTY products do incredibly well here and just less so there. That business is more driven by tablet kind of design products or 12-T products, things we don’t have in our line, and so we have to continue to figure out what’s the right design center and form factor to be successful in Europe, so I think some of its been product related, some of ithas been execution, some of it’s our scale, but I think the first thing we have to do is get the right product for that market and that’s something we’re working on.
Alles hier terug te lezen:
PALM Q2 FY08 (Qtr End 11/30/07) Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha