Friday the 13th is proving lucky for Palm Inc., which had its stock upgraded to an outperform rating on Friday by RBC Capital Markets. The reason? The upcoming Palm Pre and the new webOS mobile operating system are strong enough to put Palm back on top in smartphones.
The handset-maker may have suffered six straight quarterly losses as thirst for Treos waned in the shadow of the iPhone and various BlackBerries. But that’s all set to change once webOS swings into action, according to Mike Abramsky, the analyst with RBC Capital that upgraded Palm’s rating. The first webOS handset, the touchscreen 3G Pre, will launch on the Sprint-Nextel Corp. network in the first half of the year.
"Palm has developed end-to-end smartphone software and hardware, providing a superior user experience, which we believe can offer a compelling alternative to iPhone," said Abramsky. "Rather than a 'one product Hail Mary,' we see webOS as a platform, spawning a family of devices addressing a broader market opportunity."
Could that mean netbooks as well? Maybe. webOS boasts a general Internet-ready approach to mobility, and Palm is using it to tap into the trends of cloud applications, mobile broadband, Web 2.0 and third-party development.
For instance, it has a built-in ability to amalgamate information from a variety of sources into one portal, whether that be data from e-mail clients, social networks or other Web apps and widgets. Whenever activity happens online, the Palm interface is updated automatically over the air.
It’s this sort of native ability that will let Palm take an ascendant role in the smartphone game, possibly catching Apple, according to Abramsky.
The thumb’s up from RBC Capital comes a day after Palm and Sprint held a joint Webcast to talk up the Pre. The company’s stock was edging upwards half a percentage point in mid-afternoon trading.
