Palm Corrects McNamee's Palm Pre Exaggerations in SEC Filing

By Editor Wireless and Mobile News on March 10, 2009 2:56 PM

The televangelist for the Palm Pre, Roger McNamee stands to be corrected in SEC filings from Palm. McNamee loves to praise the capabilities and of the Palm Pre and poo-poo other smartphones such as the iPhone.

Bloomberg broadcast an interview with Roger McNamee and published and article where he discussed Palm and the Palm Pre smartphone. McNamee got a some numbers wrong and was a little too enthusiastic.

Here are some highlights of their disclaimer:

Palm claims that the interview and article published by Bloomberg were not prepared by or reviewed by Palm prior their broadcasting and publication. Statements in the interview or article that are not made directly by Mr. McNamee represent Bloomberg's or others' opinions, and are not endorsed by Palm or Elevation Partners.

With respect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript that the Palm Pre is "going to be a million times - well, not a million times - several times faster" than Apple, Inc.'s iPhone products and is "going to run rings around them on the web," the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.

With respect to the statements in the twelfth paragraph of the transcript that "there are aspects of the Pre that are unlike any phone you've every seen before,the Pre is the first one that is the next generation" and "the result is it does a lot of things the others guys don't do," the Palm Pre is designed to be the first phone based on the Palm webOS platform and as a result will have different operating characteristics and features than other phones, however; the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to compare its full functionality with that of other phones.

The statements in the fourteenth paragraph of the transcript regarding the relative development and stability of Sprint's Verizon's and AT&T's 3G networks are generalizations regarding wireless cellular network performance that may or may not be true depending on a variety of factors specific to geographic regions .

The statement in the second paragraph of the article that "not one" person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date "will still be using an iPhone a month" after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.

With respect to the statements in the second to last paragraph of the article that "the underlying technology for Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry is about 13 years old, while the technology behind the iPhone goes back almost nine years," estimating one specific age for the many technology components underlying any mobile phone is inherently imprecise and these statements are withdrawn.

With respect to the implications in the second to last and last paragraphs of the article that Palm's new operating system will give it an edge over competitors that "are going to run out of gas way before" Palm, estimations of the relative useful lifespan of smartphone operating systems are conjecture, unverifiable at this time, and age is not necessarily predictive of their relative long-term success.

The result of this PR, Palm shares rose $15 on the tail of its announcement to seek funding.

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