PALM Announces Pre Release Date

We highlight Palm, Inc. (PALM - Analyst Report), Sprint Nextel Corp. (S - Analyst Report), Best Buy Co., Inc. (BBY - Analyst Report), RadioShack Corp. (RSH - Snapshot Report), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT - Snapshot Report)Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM - Analyst Report), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT - Snapshot Report) and Apple, Inc. (AAPL - Analyst Report).

Palm, Inc. (PALM - Analyst Report) has announced the release date of the Palm Pre and its operating system. They will be available on June 6 (the day before the new iPhone is expected), priced at $199.99 (no surprise) after a $100 rebate and a two-year contract from Sprint (S - Analyst Report). It is not clear if the Pre will be available at Best Buy (BBY - Analyst Report), RadioShack (RSH - Snapshot Report) and (a few) Wal-Mart (WMT - Snapshot Report) stores at the same time, since some trade sources suggest that availability will be restricted to build hype. Sales in Canada will follow later this year.

http://News.palmnewsletters.com/cgi-bin13/DM/y/e5gJ0PSv830Kil0wAN0Gz

At the same time, Palm should announce more details of the Application store.

Users will have to sign up for a data plan, costing from $69 to $99 a month, although this may change by the end of June as other digital plans are introduced by other smartphone producers.

Sales of smartphones this year have grown. Using the operating system as a means to track growth and market share, it is possible to discern trends that are hidden when devices only are looked at. Many cell phone manufacturers will make phones to run on an operating system proscribed by the carrier. The current run rate of smartphones is 3.1 million a month and is expected to grow to over 5.0 million a month before year-end.

The market leader is Research In Motion (RIMM - Analyst Report) (44% market share) followed by Windows Mobile (Microsoft [MSFT - Snapshot Report]) (27.5%) and Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL - Analyst Report) iPhone (20.5%). From January 2009 to April 2009, Palm has dropped in market share from 2.5% to 1.2%, about the same magnitude decline as Linux (11% to 5.5%). Symbian and "other" have also declined, but nowhere near as much. Windows Mobile share has remained constant and Apple’s has declined slightly.

Palm has been affected by customers waiting to buy the Pre. However, Palm was the fifth largest at the beginning of 2009 and is now the close to being the seventh.  Even if Palm sells one million Pre phones in the second half of 2009 (at the high end of declining forecasts by industry analysts) it will still be a bit player in a megabyte market.