Palm loses $22 million in Q3, improves from $98 million loss last year

Palm reported a net loss of $22 million for the third quarter, a big improvement from the net loss of $98 million it posted in the third quarter last year. During the three month period, the manufacturer shipped 960,000 smartphones which was a 23% increase sequentially from the second quarter of this year and a whopping 300% increase from last year. Palm added Verizon as a vendor for the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus which might explain the year over year improvement. Sell through was weak as 408,000 units changed hands in the quarter for a decline of 29% from last quarter and a 15% drop from last year. Jon Rubinstein, Palm's CEO, said that because of the Pre and Pixi's exclusivity period with Sprint, it could not launch at Verizon until after the DROID was released. The executive said that the timing made all the difference in the world as he said that had Palm's handsets been launched before the DROID, they would have received the attention that the latter model received and would have outsold Time Magazine's 2009 Gadget of The Year because-in Rubinstein's words-"I believe we have a better product." Considering that the Motoreola flagship model outsold the first-gen iPhone after 74 days as we reported, that seems like very wishful thinking on the CEO's part. After all, there were some things of Palm's own doing that did in the 2 phones such as an unfocused ad campaign, questionable build quality, lack of apps at launch, and small screens in a time where bigger is better. As we told you the other day, now it seems that AT&T is having problems getting the webOS duo ready for launch on its network. On the other hand, the DROID benefited from a powerful marketing campaign, tank-like construction, big screen with high resolution and the momentum of Androidmania

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source: Palm