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Palm is now survive. Friday, the opening of the NYSE, the action of the cellphone maker lost nearly 30%, to $ 4, after the publication of quarterly results disastrous. Since the beginning of the year, diving for more than 50%, completely erasing the gains made in 2009, after the presentation of the Palm Pre, who was to sign the renewal of the brand.

Between December and February, Palm has accumulated cons-performance. Its losses have almost doubled to 22 million dollars and his phones were sold poorly. Although Palm has shipped to retailers smartphones 960,000, almost four times more than a year earlier, but customers still bought 408,000. Result, operators found themselves with huge inventories, and decided to cut off their supplies.Revenues from Palm on the current quarter would be only 150 million dollars, two times less than expected by the market.

Palm is the scenario. "These problems are not going to accelerate the doubts providers and operators" on the future of the brand, wrote Friday morning Peter Misek, analyst at Canaccord Adams, which sets a target price to zero dollars. The operators have observed that, in their shops, customers are more eager to iPhone, Google Android phones and BlackBerry.Under these conditions, application developers are less interested in phones from Palm, which makes them less attractive.

Palm would have to "consider options more extreme"

"We see no quick solution to the challenges facing it: the risk of intensifying competition, and Palm's response seems inadequate," warned Friday Vivek Arya, an analyst at Bank of America / Merrill Lynch. "Palm has at most two or three quarters to take before having to consider more extreme options," she thought. Frontline is the idea of redemption. The names of Nokia, Dell, Hewlett-Packard or even Google, which embarked on the sale of its mobile phones with the Nexus One are among the most frequently mentioned.

Palm remains in effect a few gems. The operating system that runs its phones, webOS, has received very favorable reviews.His team, led by former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, are recognized for their quality. Furthermore, Palm has an interesting patent portfolio in mobile telephony, while the litigation in this area are increasing. "Obviously, if there is a reasonable proposal, our board of directors must consider," admitted CEO of Palm, while refusing to speculate on a purchase.

While acknowledging a "underperformance very disappointing," Jon Rubinstein holds that "Palm's potential remains strong." "The work we do to improve sales has an impact, we are making great progress on future products, and we prepare to launch new operators with new partners," he said, announcing a new campaign.In 2009, the market share of smartphones in webOS however, was only 0.7%, according to latest figures from Gartner, against 3.9% for Android, 14.4% for the iPhone and 46% for Symbian.