Posted 02/26/10 at 03:01:23 PM by Pulkit Chandna

While there is no gainsaying the fact that the Pre did lend a fatally rudderless Palm some direction, the much anticipated forward thrust is an entirely different matter. The impetus that Palm hoped to receive from its dapper webOS products hasn't materialized. The Sunnyvale-based company has lowered its guidance for the current fiscal. It blamed the move on lower-than-expected sales of its new webOS-based phones.

“Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion,” CEO Jon Rubinstein announced in an internal email meant for employees. Its full financial results will be announced next month.

Rubinstein clarified that the the abrupt announcement was being made in order to “prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March.” But this announcement did take many by surprise and sent its shares down south. Its share price dropped 13% on the news before eventually making a bit of a come back.

 The company is currently pursuing a new strategy to improve sales. “To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products.” It clearly believes that lack of awareness and Verizon's poor handling of its products are the two major factors hampering sales.

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Posted 12/17/09 at 06:42:45 AM by Paul Lilly

Adobe this week reported financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended November 27, 2009. According to the report, the company recorded fourth quarter revenue of $757.3 million, down from $915.3 million for the fourth quarter in 2008, but up from $697.5 million in the third quarter of this year.

"We experienced an improvement in customer demand for our products in Q4," said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. "We believe the investments we have made in the past year, and the new products we will deliver in the coming year, will drive top line growth as the economy improves."

Adobe also pointed out that the results take into account the company's acquisition of Omniture, a deal that was valued at approximately $1.8 billion back in September. As a result of the close of that acquisition, Adobe was able to add $26.3 million to its Q4 revenue, with another $8.3 million deferred in accordance with business combination accounting guidelines.

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Posted 07/21/09 at 10:15:32 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft is scheduled to post quarterly results next Thursday. While things have started to look up for the Redmond-based behemoth, especially its search engine business, its main growth drivers, Windows and Office, still remain hamstrung due to the bleak state of the PC market.

Wall Street analysts are almost certain Microsoft will report a dip in profit and sales for its fiscal fourth quarter. They expect Microsoft to report earnings of around 36 cents a share and $14.38 billion in revenue, according to Reuters. It must be noted that the company had reported earnings of 46 cents a share and $15.84 billion in revenue for the same quarter last year.

With the PC market showing some signs of recovery and the chances of a search-and-online-ads deal between Yahoo and Microsoft having been revived, Microsoft has a lot to look forward to.

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