Palm and 3Com is a very different story. In fact, back when I was interested in stocks, I bought 1,000 US Robotics, simply because I had just bought a Palm Pilot. That was nearly 4 years ago now. I ended up being 2 years early, as I usually am.
To cut a long story short, I sold the entire 1,000 when the price dropped to 50% of the price I paid. (I have a cast iron rule. No matter what, if an investment has fallen to half of my entry price, I sell. No matter what. The reasoning being the investment is entirely different and, at the time of purchase, I must have misjudged the potential. More than a few CNXT investors have recently exercised similar rules!)
3Com and Palm is very different from CNXT. Palm has always been the value story and 3Com was just one in a long series of moneybags, who could fund Palm until it could stand on its own feet. 3Com was always a marginal business at best and Palm, last year, was the darling. Hence the prices now.
All I have to say about Palm is that Palm Inc. will eventually be acquired but first it will sink like a stone.
Again I may be a year or so early, but Palm has ceased to innovate (at least publicly) and the competition has grabbed the momentum. I see PALM much lower, when folks realize that they are no longer in control of their own market.
Coincidentally I have just sold my Palm V on eBay and purchased a Compaq iPaq Pocket PC. Cool!
Compaq, as an entire company, is yet another basket case, but they obviously have a very savvy group of folks in control of their Pocket PC effort. There is a spin off that could really fly! Check out the iPaq story. It has been in production for an entire year and has ALWAYS been in short supply and flies off any shelf that it lands on. It seems to me that Compaq has "managed" this product by denying it funds until very recently. Watch this one! |
