John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Palm CEO: Can’t Read My, Can’t Read My Poker Face…

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has a message for those who claim the company’s days are numbered: Palm is not going anywhere.

Though the company’s fast-declining fortunes might suggest its endgame is either buyout or bankruptcy, things aren’t quite so dour–not according to Rubinstein, anyway. The commercial success that has so far eluded Palm isn’t unobtainable, he says, it’s just, you know…a bit farther off than than the company and its investors would like.

“I believe Palm can survive as an independent company,” Rubinstein told the Financial Times. “We have a plan that gets us to profitability.”

Sadly, Rubinstein didn’t provide much detail about the plan beyond the just-you-wait-and-see promises we’ve heard from him before. “[We’re working] fast and furious on new handsets,” he said. “We do have a strong pipeline of products in the future.”

Rubinstein also noted that Palm (PALM) would consider licensing its webOS mobile operating system to other companies, given the right circumstances. “Of course we would licence webOS because obviously the more scale we get the more the benefit there is to us.”

Obviously.

But this, too, is something we’re heard from Rubinstein before. And without any insight into how such licensing deals would be structured or who might be interested in them, it’s tough put much faith in them.

To me, these claims, and some others made in this “upbeat” MarketWatch interview, read like simple posturing–the CEO of a foundering company positioning it for a sale with some always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life proclamations. Conjure a vision of new killer handsets and lucrative licensing deals, do your best to breathe some life into the stock and hope for a good price when you’re finally up on the block.

Maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work