MSN Money: Palm Won't Make It To 2020 (Update)

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Robert Werlinger | Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:45 pm EST |

It's hard enough trying to predict what is going to happen in the mobile universe in the next six months, let alone the next 10 years. That is unless, of course, unless you are a financial writer. MSN Money's Michael Brush lists Palm in his newest column, 7 companies that won't make it to 2020, joining the likes of BlockBuster and Sears, arguing that the company will "drop out like a cell phone connection in bad coverage", for what boils down to six primary reasons:

Apple iPhones have a lock on coolness.
Apps bring in extra revenue. There are more than 100,000 apps for iPhones, and far less for webOS
The business crowd favors BlackBerrys because of its email system,
Google offers its Android operating system to handset makers for free
Palm only maintains a 7% market share, therefore lacks the financial strength, research budget, and marketing influence that it needs to survive.
Sprint was a poor launch Partner choice

And while webOS devices are coming to other domestic carriers (and will continue expanding abroad) in 2010, an analyst cited for the story is skeptical that it will do much to change Palm's fortunes. The article, absurd arguments aside ("Apple has a lock on cool with the iPhone") paints a grim picture indeed.

You probably shouldn't be too down after reading this latest death knell for Palm, however. As the case has been over the last few months, every article and analyst spelling out an early end for the Sunnyvale, CA based company seems to have another that is favorable of its prospects. Merrill Lynch, for example, released a rather rosy assessment of Palm's future early last month, other analysts are still saying 'buy,' and generally there's an analyst scrum to get a word in edgewise before Palm's upcoming earnings statement.

No matter what the outlook on Palm, there is no question that the path ahead will be a tumultuous one; hundreds of phones from a myriad of hardware and software markers will put increasing pressure on the company, and Palm has a lot of work ahead of it to compete with comparatively little resources in order to do so. What will really be telling of Palm’s long term prospects will be if it can attain its goal of becoming cash flow positive and indeed profitable by the end of the company’s 2010 fiscal year.

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

Update: A number of our readers have pointed out that my quotation of article from MSN is not accurate; that the title of their article is "7 companies that may not make it to 2020", not "7 companies that won't make it to 2020", and they are correct. The original title of that article was indeed "7 Companies That Won't Make it to 2020", which means that MSN Money changed the title of their article after we published ours.

The title isn't the only thing that they changed. The author or his editors also changed some of the copy in the original article without noting it. A number of RSS Scrapers captured the content before the article changed names and copy. Gone is the money quote from above when Brush states that Palm will "drop out like a cell phone connection in bad coverage". Here's a comparison of the Palm portion of the article, before and after (click for bigger):

Even with the change in copy, Brush's arguments for why Palm will fail remain the same - he's just a little less authoritative in his stance in this second version of his article.