After listening in on yesterday’s Palm investor call, I came away feeling only half-satisfied. On the one hand, Palm says it’s poised to become cash-flow positive in two quarters. The company ended the last fiscal quarter of 2009 with $255.1 million in cash, even after going through $72.4 million. Sales of the Palm Pre really won’t impact finances until the next quarter, but according to CEO Jon Rubinstein, “Everything is going according to plan.” Palm expects gross margins for the Pre to approach 30 percent over time, which will surely help the bottom line.

On the other hand, the second piece of the puzzle isn’t yet in place. To continue driving demand for the Pre, the Application Catalog needs to be significantly expanded. It’s currently in a beta and holds a meager 30 applications. And there won’t be many more added until Palm gets the Mojo SDK to a wider audience. Continue »

One sure way to hinder success of a device is a confusing name and an unclear purpose. That might explain the results of a recent NPD survey on netbooks, showing that many consumers are bewildered and disappointed with the gadgets.

Some highlights from the survey tell the story of a device that doesn’t behave as the average PC user would expect:

• 60 percent of netbook owners expected the device to have the same functionality as a notebook.
• 65 percent of the 18- to 24-year old demographic expected their netbook to perform better than a notebook. Only 27 percent of those felt that the netbook performed better than expected.
• 59 percent of netbook consumers made a purchase decision based on device portability, yet 60 percent of netbook buyers never take the machine out of the house. Continue »

I’m starting to believe that the fight for the netbook operating system simply won’t go the full 10 rounds. In case you haven’t yet managed to score a ringside seat, let me offer you a blow-by-blow recap.
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The netbook craze continues. The little laptops took center stage at the recently completed Computex conference, with dozens of new devices and prototypes on display. But while one would think that the netbook explosion would have all of the involved parties singing happy songs around a campfire, that’s not the case. In fact, there appears to be more drama in the netbook scene than there is on “Jon & Kate Plus 8.” Continue »

After six long months, Palm’s Pre is here. And I do mean here — I woke early and headed to a local Sprint store this morning. Availability reports vary by location; some stores have large lines and small quantities of stock, while others (like mine) have short lines and plenty of Pre to go around. Our early impressions are generally favorable: In what may be the bottom of the ninth, Palm has delivered the beginnings of a comeback with the Pre and WebOS. Here are three things we like and dislike about Palm Pre. Continue »

Have you heard about the newly announced computers with the mysterious and non-alluring CULV acronym yet? If you haven’t, get ready for a big dose of them, because they’re about to pop out of the woodwork. They’re exciting! They’re stupendous! That’s what Intel would have you believe anyway, since it created the CULV moniker, which is the sexy way of saying “Consumer Ultra Low Voltage.” Here’s the non-sexy and actually descriptive definition I like to use: They’re a cheaper, lower-powered device sitting somewhere between the netbooks and traditional notebooks that are currently available. Due to the smaller chip size and lower power requirements, you’ll see CULV notebooks that are smaller, lighter and thinner, but you’ll sacrifice some relative processing power. Acronyms are nice, but clearly it causes some folks to think that CULV notebooks are a whole, new device class, which only serves to confuse consumers.

While marketing gurus would have you think these Intel CULV processors are newfangled, cutting-edge technologies, I’ll spell out the reality. Continue »

Last year was arguably “The Year of the Netbook.” Unfortunately for AMD and NVIDIA, they were left on the sidelines as the netbook market picked up steam in 2008. The vast majority of these devices run on Intel’s Atom chip using the company’s integrated GMA 950 for the graphics component. With the imminent release of Microsoft’s Windows 7 later this year, there are already reports of Microsoft and Intel jointly agreeing on exactly what constitutes a netbook for Windows 7: Screen sizes of 10.2 inches is the killer for both chip competitors.

Earlier this year, both AMD and NVIDIA announced their strategies to get in the netbook game. AMD purchased graphics company ATI back in 2006 and created Neo, a platform comparable to Intel’s Atom. In some respects, AMD’s Neo trumps Intel’s Atom. By pairing an ATI GPU with an AMD Athlon CPU, Neo can easily handle decoding an 1080p Blu-ray disc. By comparison, an Intel Atom netbook drops frames on a 480p Hulu stream, making the experience choppier than whitewater rafting on a windy day. It’s not all smooth sailing for Neo, though. Continue »