Last week, we reported on - and were amused by - the quotes from big Palm investor Roger McNamee, who made some pretty bold claims about the upcoming Palm Pre and its main competitor, the iPhone. Even though McNamee is not an employee of Palm, the company did issue an unusual retraction today.
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Member since:
2006-05-26
That's because this investor almost certainly has a rather large amount of insider information, and this could be deemed to be manipulating other investors into making their decisions based on this insider knowledge, being stated from someone that would seem logical to have such insider knowledge. In other words, Palm clearly has a problem with letting such things stand from the SEC's point of view as it is material knowledge that this investor almost certainly has, that may be (real or perceived) used to manipulate the price of the stock: this is absolutely a bad thing from a legal point to have happen, or even the perception of it. If you've ever been employed by a publicly traded company, there's all kinds of things about what you can and can't do, and why, regarding "material information" such as this investor almost certainly has, or at least outsiders have a reasonable expectation that he has. As soon as they're aware of any such breaches, like any company traded, they're required legally to do what they've done.
Palm is just doing their legal requirements: this isn't nearly so odd as you make it out to be, except for the fact that someone that's not associated with a rumor site said this much.
RE: Actually, this is precisely what they needed to do...
Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2005-11-21
That's an effect, not the cause. The cause to make this guy shoot his mouth off is rhetoric from Palm engineers who didn't expect their marketing hype to be spewed forth for the world to read, long before a product arrives.
Undersell, over deliver. The other way around spells doom.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-06
Exactly... the retraction reads like a retroactive version of the "forward-looking statements" disclaimer that JLG used to be fond of.
Member since:
2005-07-13
Member since:
2007-04-03
It's not like anyone outside of the 3 remaining Palm users care anyways. Palm had their chance to be the main player in the game, but rested on their laurels for way too long and did nothing to improve their technology.
Palm is about as relevant as SGI nowadays.
Edited 2009-03-11 01:03 UTC
Member since:2006-11-02
The smart phone market is highly competitive, and not nearly as closed as the desktop market. Any company, whether it had past successes in the market or not, can be successful with a good product. There's up till now no reason to assume the Pre is not a good product, and therefore no reason to assume it is doomed for failure.
JAL
Member since:
2006-01-23
Strange when I see it coming from someone connected to Palm. It doesn't seem quite right. PalmOS sat for so long that you'd think everyone around it would be quite reserved.
I'd expect this kind of hyperbole from an Apple fanatic who can't see reality, but just as Apple doesn't apologise or retract (in general), why is Palm?
