Palm in Deep Trouble; Halts Pre, Pixi Production

[Daniel ~]

Palm reportedly has 1.5 million unsold Palm Pre and Pixi units. It has halted sales, a sign of the company's deep problems. (Source: Palm via VentureBeat)
Bad news continues for veteran mobile device maker

Palm, maker of the Pre and Pixi smartphones, is facing desperate times.

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[Gizmo]

As one pundit commented, 'Palm have successfully, in less than a year, squandered what was generally positive press and taken a promising product and run it into the ground'.

I've played with a friend's iPhone, and I like my Pre quite a bit better, especially now that the firmware has been updated. It's user interface is, in my mind, more usable and intuitive than Apple's. However, Palm's version 1.0 WebOS was lacking in some features (such as video recording, or IM connectivity) that were sorely missed by a lot of users (by way of comparison, my Palm Centro had video and audio recording, and would allow me to connect to MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and AIM. My Pre lacked video and audio recording, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo, and AIM, although it offered GoogleTalk). To make matters worse, almost a year later, we've just NOW gotten video and audio recording, but ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN are still nowhere to be found. People can now FINALLY synchronize their contacts with Exchange. The original developer kit only allowed interepreted applications. Only recently has it become possible to develop and install native code applications.

These are all functions that are critical in a phone that is going to be taken seriously as a Smart Phone, and they are all functions that Palm's competitors either offered at the time the Pre came out, or got shortly thereafter.