SANTA CLARA, Calif.-Personal digital assistant giant Palm Inc. reported solid earnings in line with investor expectations and company projections, evidence the company has reined in its costs and cash management.
Palm reported revenue for the fourth quarter, ended May 31, of $233 million and a net loss of $18 million. The company said it shipped 900,000 devices during the fourth quarter, and that the total number of devices running the Palm operating system increased to 23 million. Palm made sure to point out that 5 million devices have shipped with Microsoft Corp.’s Pocket PC operating system.
Separately, Palm’s operating system subsidiary PalmSource Inc., which the company is preparing to spin off, announced the Palm OS will soon support applications built on Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java technology. Palm said it is teaming with Insignia Solutions to make the PDA-capable Java virtual machine.
Also, PalmSource said chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. will make Palm OS-compatible chips, joining the likes of Intel, MediaQ, Motorola and Texas Instruments. Finally, PalmSource said its president and chief operating officer, Todd Bradley, will now serve as the company’s chief executive officer.
The company also said that the new version of its operating system will use the same wireless Internet browser technology that NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode wireless data service uses.
Palm signed a deal with software company Access, which provides the browser for the popular i-mode service and will include the company’s NetFront browser in its new Palm OS version 5. The browser technology works on xHTML and supports JavaScript, Secure Socket Layer and multimedia messaging service technologies.
Access’ NetFront browser is used in over 177 different consumer electronics devices from over 40 manufacturers.
