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Technology Stocks : PALM - The rebirth of Palm Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: P.M.Freedman who wrote (1727)	9/14/2000 8:50:59 AM
From: TechieGuy-alt	Respond to of 6784

Interesting story, but the 55K/month number fails my "back-of-the-envelope-sanity-test". Here's why: Palm sold 1.1 million devices last Q. Assuming that they sell at least 1.1 million devices this Q, and they are evenly distributed over the Q and the US accounts for 50% of those sales (not an unreasonable estimate), then we get: Sales/month for Palm in the US = 1100000 .5 (US) .3(per month) = 183K devices/month Now, I believe that about 70% of those sales are consumer (and 30% corporate). Hence US monthly CONSUMER sales = 128K/month And these are JUST for PALM. The story was talking about "devices". PALM has about (say)70% of the market. Hence total device sales in US consumer market = 1281.3 = 166K Their 55K/mo number is way off and should be more like 55K/week* (assuming a growth in sales from last Q etc.) But then when you are a tech writer (or analyst for that matter), a week, a month? What's the diff? Eh? Eventually weeks become months anyway! TG

To: P.M.Freedman who wrote (1727)	9/14/2000 9:25:53 AM
From: David E. Taylor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6784

P.M.: Couple of things in that article caught my eye: 55,000 devices a month?? That's 165,000 devices/Q. PALM did 1.1 million and HAND around 0.35 million by themselves in Q2 this year! Add in Sony, HWP, CPQ and others and 55,000 is a joke. If that's more PC Data (may not be), it just shows how far off they can be. Tapping into the enthusiasm, Palm's m100, a curvaceous $150 device designed to replace the Palm III, became the second-best selling handheld behind the Palm Vx soon after its debut in October 1999. Now if true, that's a useful bit of info. I wonder if that's second best for PALM, or second best overall? Back to the revenue/earnings model! That added horsepower, combined with plans to add more capabilities like MP3 players and Internet connectivity to the devices, has some in the industry concerned that Palm developers could drift away from their original mantra of simplicity, creating beefier software just because the devices can handle it. "You've got to avoid the kitchen-sink syndrome," McGuire said. "If you start just throwing stuff out there because you can, you've got to be careful that you don't diminish the core appeal of the device." It's still unclear how much complexity consumers are willing to tolerate in a handheld computer. Devices running Microsoft Corp.'s PocketPC operating system have rich color screens, the ability to access HTML Web pages and handle documents, but they haven't yet made a significant dent in Palm's market dominance. That's one opinion firmly in support of the PALM/HAND k.i.s.s/customizeable approach vs. the MSFT/Pocket PC "cram everything anyone might want in the device" approach in the discussion we've been having here on power, speed, features, built-in applications, etc. David T.