Palm CEO: We could have been bigger than Droid

18.03.2010
If Palm's WebOS products had gone on sale at Verizon before Motorola's Droid, Palm's fortunes today would be very different, the company's CEO said Thursday during its third-quarter earnings call. "

"If we could have launched at Verizon prior to the Droid, I think we would have gotten the attention the Droid got. And since I believe we have a better product, I think we could have even done better," said Jon Rubinstein, Palm's CEO.

Instead, sales of the Palm Pre and Pixi have been below expectations enough that the company's carrier partners now have stockpiles of the phones, and in February Palm warned that its earnings would be lower than previously expected.

In the current quarter, Palm is focused on "helping carriers work down their substantial inventories," said Doug Jeffries, Palm's chief financial officer.

As a result, Palm expects to sell even fewer phones in the fourth quarter, and predicts revenues of less than US$150 million. It couldn't say how long it expects it will take to work through that inventory. "We have a ways to go and it will take some time to work through it," Jeffries said.

On Thursday, Palm reported third-quarter revenue of $349.9 million using generally accepted accounting procedures. That compares to $90.6 million in the same quarter last year.