Talkin' Pre -- Week ending 31 October 6

What a week! Palm announced the Pixi will arrive on November 15. The App Catalog continues to grow (which is a good thing). Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) study looks favorable for the Pre. Then there was the UGLY ending of a dismal month where the stock closed at $11.59... way down. So let's talk Pre (and Pixi)!

Coming Soon! Palm Pixi due to land at Sprint on Nov 15
The next in the family of webOS-based smartphones, The Palm Pixi, is due to arrive at Sprint on November 15, for $99.99 (after rebates and with a two-year service agreement).

By the way, Palm is holding a Pixi Q&A on Twitter on Monday, November 2

Here comes the Droid; Impact on Pre is Pondered
Droid due next Friday, November 6, at Verizon. Dieter wrote:

"It's got us thinking: we've already heard confirmation that the Pre will hit Verizon in 'early 2010' (our money is still on January) - but it's going to be landing amidst a much more crowded field. The Pre will be up again the Droid, the Eris, and the Storm2. Had Palm not stuck with Sprint for so long, they could have had a window where the Pre would have have had a legitimate claim to be the solitary flagship device on big V.

There were 98 comments on his post, definitely check out the conversation!

Pre Ranked 14th -- PC World Top Products 2009
The Pre ranked 14th out of 100 other products in PC World's annual round-up of the "cream of the crop" evaluating design, functionality, performance and impact. Here's what they had to say:

14. Palm Pre (smartphone, $150 with two-year Sprint contract) The Pre wowed us with its engaging (and fun to use) WebOS software and eye-catching hardware. Thanks to the Pre's responsive multitouch screen, its intuitive gesture-based controls, and WebOS's beautiful way of organizing information, this smartphone is a pleasure to use. The keyboard may not be perfect, but that's a minor trade-off for everything else the Pre offers.

BillShrink.com Releases TCO Numbers -- Palm Pre viewed Favorably
Palm Pre and MyTouch 3G (Android) are tied in Unlimited Plan Total Costs ($2549) and Average Plan Total Costs ($2309). 

Thoughts on App Distribution
This week, Palm's Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer spoke at Sprint's developer conference about the app distribution models that they're working on.  Check out the video that accompanied this post.

And the App Catalog keeps growing...

Sprint Announces Earnings...

In a nutshell, they lost a net 135,000 subscribers (but Sprint said it was the "best net retail subscriber results in more than two years."). Dieter commented:

"We're going to go ahead and give the Pre some credit for the improvement despite whisperings that the device still isn't performing up to expectations. Sprint actually had a nice time these past few months, with arguably the best high-end handset lineup in the US."

You can check out what Digital Daily had to say here and here.

Apple Kills Pre Sync Again
You can read about the cat and mouse game here.  It is what it is...

Palm Stock Gets Hammered

After ending September at $17.46, the stock closed out October at $11.59.

This week's down slide garnered a number of posts at PreCentral, like this one. Besides the Droid announcement and Sprint's earnings, other factors contributing to Palm's dismal October include:

• A post by Motley Fool's Eric "Candy Thief" Bleeker which was especially harsh.
• Earlier in the week, the ChangeWave report on smartphone market share wasn't stellar for Palm (held flat month-to-month).

• A downgrade by Tim Long at BMO Capital Markets to “underperform” (the company will not meet expectations). Long stated that he believes, “Android will step up in importance at many operators, which, ex-Sprint, would put PALM in the position of fourth OS (AAPL, RIMM, Android) and sometimes even lower.”  Additionally, Long also thinks that the Pixi, due to be released in less than a month, will only provide a modest bump in Palm’s numbers, and at the expense of Pre sales at that.
• Pundit talk from our colleague Matthew Miller, in a piece titled "Can Palm and WebOS make it through 2010."  He said, "The most exciting smartphone platform at the moment is Google Android and they now have or soon will have devices on T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon. In my opinion, the HTC Hero on Sprint is a more compelling device than the Palm Pre on the same carrier due to its rock solid hardware, availability of thousands of applications, and user experiences that match and even exceed what we see on the Palm Pre."

But Credit is Upgraded by S&P
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services has upgraded Palm’s credit rating to the level of CCC+, a single notch away from no longer being considered a dangerous speculative play in the stock market. The upgrade comes as a result of Palm’s expanding webOS portfolio (with the Pixi on the way in less than three weeks) and the company’s recent secondary stock offering that raised some $360 million for operations.

OpenTable Mobile Apps: More Than 1 Million Served
According to a post appearing in OpenTable's blog, more and more diners are booking reservations on the go. 

How do we know? Since launching our first mobile application, we’ve seated more than 1,000,000 hungry diners through them!

With mobile applications for the iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry, and Android operating systems, there’s an OpenTable app for almost every device.

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Let's close with something fun: watching a couple of the 'other guys' go at it

[YouTube Link]

 That's a wrap!