Pixie/Eos “delayed” to 2010?
Palm Wars Episode V: The Analysts Strike Back. Not long after throwing Palm’s stock into the clearance bin, Morgan Joseph analyst Ilya Grozovsky has penned another research note on Palm.
This time he’s claiming that the unannounced non-slider Eos/Pixie webOS smartphone has been delayed from its unannounced 2009 holiday season to next year. Grozovsky stated that Palm will need to put all its muscle behind the Eos if it hopes to compete against the $99 iPhone 3G currently on AT&T (the Eos is rumored to be landing on AT&T - and Sprint - at $99).
No sources, even of the completely anonymous variety, were cited, leading us to advise that this is to be taken with considerable sodium chloride. Note also the scare quotes about "delayed" in the title - it's hard to call something 'delayed' when we know so little about what the original plans for it were in the first place.
Ok, one anonymous tip we received earlier in the month was that prototype units of the Eos on Sprint had at least made their way out of Palm HQ -- so the thing probably exists out there in Sprintland.
Palm Pre Return Rate Now Pegged at 2% – 3% (Dueling Analysts)
Not a day since we took Jim Cramer to task for citing the 40% return rate number, Scott Moritz at Cramer's own publication, The Street, contradicts Cramer with numbers of his own. He cites RBC Analyst Mike Abramsky, who suggest that "the return rate has been low, running between 2% and 3%."
Abramsky also estimates sales at 350,000. Abransky's numbers come from a survey of around two dozen Sprint stores.
Both the sales numbers and the return rates have been hot topics of late and frankly, it would be pretty nice to see some clearer guidance from Palm so we can stop playing dueling analysts. At this point, we're much more interested in sales number than return rates -- if only because the likelihood that we'll ever get a clear answer on the latter is basically nil.
Thanks to blackmagic01 for the tip!
