RBC on Palm

Sprint's continued shortages of the Palm Pre could lead to a massive spike in Palm's sales for its current quarter, RBC analyst Mark Abramsky reports in a new investment note today. The researcher esimates that 150,000 Pre smartphones have shipped so far and that as many as 550,000 could ship by the end of Palm's current quarter. Both are up significantly from earlier predictions and could offset a drop in Centro and Treo phone numbers to 258,000.

Abramsky is optimistic enough about Palm's future that he has also boosted his expectations for Palm in its fiscal 2010 and 2011 years from just 3.2 million and 4.6 million phones respectively to 4.1 million and 6.5 million. He attributes the growth to likely extra carriers for the Pre, including Bell Canada and O2 UK, as well as extra models. The Eos is also expected to be a major trigger this fall as it would reach the crucial $99 price point as well as carriers locked out by national exclusives, like AT&T.

In the long term, RBC supports notions of a Verizon webOS phone, likely the Pre, and sees more phones in 2010.

If supported in practice, these numbers would mark a near-immediate turnaround for Palm, which is basing the future of its company exclusively on webOS and has been rapidly deemphasizing the Windows Mobile-based Treo Pro and the aging, PalmOS-run Centro. Palm has been running low on funds and has had to offer shares multiple times to raise cash as well as receive further investments from Elevation Partners.

Much of Palm's return to health is attributed to former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, who significantly overhauled the engineering team upon becoming a board executive and just this month became CEO, replacing founder Ed Colligan.

By Electronista Staff