Palm laying off employees as Pre sales plunge?

With sales of the Palm Pre sagging, and with Sprint's attention focused on other handsets at the moment, such as on the upcoming Android powered HTC Hero, the miracle comeback of the cellphone manufacturer appears to be at a crossroad. There is talk at Cool Smartphone of Palm laying off staff. And while it is being attributed to a restructuring, the timing of the pink slips is suspicious. CrunchGear reports that Pre sales topped out at the end of August at 375,000 units and the price dropped from an after rebate contract price of $199 to $79 in 11 weeks. If you charted the trend, it might remind you of the life cycle of a decent feature phone, but for a device that is supposed to herald the coming of age for an amazing new OS, the future is still not certain and there might not be anything in the upcoming release of the Pixi that can change this.

Palm might have one last chance when the Pre's exclusivity with Sprint ends and Verizon gets a crack at selling the handset. The uproar that followed a bogus report that Big Red was not going to support the phone shows you that Verizon customers have not been able to forget their carriers reported rejection of the iPhone when approached by Steve Jobs all those years ago. The wireless operator needs a top of the line multimedia handset (the Storm and the Touch Pro2 are too enterprise oriented) and the Pre could fit that opening perfectly.

Palm Pre Specifications | Review

source: CoolSmartphone via CrunchGear