Palm investor puts his mouth where his money is
Unless he was misquoted, Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee suggested today that all iPhone owners are going to switch to the Palm Pre when their contracts expire.
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” McNamee told Bloomberg today. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
Wow, that’s a bold statement. One that will repeated over and over again in the press if the Pre fails to live up the high level of hype Palm has built for it. But McNamee, whose Elevation Partners has invested nearly a half billion dollars in Palm and owns a large chunk of the company (around 40 percent), undoubtedly knows that Palm absolutely needs the Palm to be a hit regardless.
Palm is struggling badly as it waits for the launch of the Pre. The company recently announced that its third quarter sales will be well below expectations - sales for the quarter were between $85 million and $90 million while Wall Street was looking for something more like $155 million. Ouch.
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