In his latest note on the company, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek says Palm’s (PALM) already substantial troubles are mounting. Palm’s latest problem: Delays in the long-rumored launch of its smartphones on AT&T (T). Originally expected this spring, sources now say the debut of new Pixi and Pre models has been pushed back until summer.

“Beyond generally lacklustre handset sales in the current quarter, which are already reflected in our previous estimates, we have recently learned that AT&T has delayed the planned launch of the Pre and Pixi on its network from April to June/July,” Misek writes.

“Moreover, we believe that this is more than just an ordinary delay,” the analyst adds, “as AT&T has cited a long list of technical issues with the Pre and Pixi. Furthermore, the carrier has decreased its initial order size and has decided to sharply reduce its marketing budget for the launch.”

So: A delayed launch on another major carrier, a smaller first order and a soft marketing budget. On top of these issues, Misek cites a mysterious “list of technical issues.” I’m not quite sure what he is hinting at; my sources tell me there are no problems with the devices on AT&T’s network–but perhaps Misek knows something they don’t.

Leaving the mystery list aside, this is bad news all around for Palm, which clearly needs the additional distribution it will get through AT&T sooner rather than later. Misek is slashing his February quarter unit shipment forecast to 670,000 from 720,000 and his 2011 forecast to 3.58 million units from four million.

Honestly, this getting difficult to watch.

Palm is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings after Thursday’s closing bell.

FURTHER READING:

• Could WebOS Licensing Be Palm’s Salvation?
• Palm’s Salvation? Less Push, More Pull.
• And if Palm’s Project JumpStart Doesn’t Work Out, There’s Always “Project Defibrillator”
• Double Face-Palm: Analysts React to Palm’s Lowered Guidance
• Time to Start Looking for a Buyer, Palm?
• 2010: Year of the Palm? Maybe Not…
• Analyst: Palm May Be Acquired in the Next Two Years

My colleagues are lapping the last one up, with good reason: The OK Go are fun to write about, because they make cool videos and because lead singer Damian Kulash is very quotable when he talks about the state of the music business and his band’s relationship with EMI.

For instance, here’s a stinging part of his exit interview with New York Magazine today:

Q: What other problems were you having with EMI?
A: ?The issue is that they just don’t have any money. The reason a band signs with a label is because they can provide start-up capital, and their business model has sort of collapsed. There was lots of little bones of contention, like when there were chances for us to promote things and they just didn’t have the money to do so. It was a lot easier to be generating the budget ourselves or through corporate partners.

EMI has issued a boilerplate quote wishing the band success–it’s going to create its own label–and leaving it at that.

And EMI does have real money problems. In part because everyone who sells music right now has money problems and in part because private equity fund Terra Firma paid too much and took on too much debt when it bought the label three years ago.

But here’s the thing. If EMI’s executives allowed themselves to speak candidly, they would likely point out that while the OK Go made great videos, it didn’t seem to make music that many people wanted to buy.

Soundscan says the band has sold all of 500,000 albums in the U.S., both in physical and digital form, in its three-album tenure at EMI. That’s 488,608, to be exact. Plus another 25,000 single tracks.

That’s not awful. But it’s not the kind of sales that would inspire a big label to spend big money promoting an act. Even when the industry’s business model was still intact.

But the band really does make nice videos that people like watching on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. If it can figure out how to turn these into dollars, it’s all set.

OK Go–This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

A: Your wait is over. Major e-book readers I’ve tested, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition, already allow highlighting. In other words, you can select any section of text in a book and give it a gray background so it stands out from the rest of the text, persistently. It’s not yellow or any other color, because the screens are grayscale and don’t display colors, but it is highlighting. You can also add notes on e-readers.

I have a Mac laptop that I use at home with Safari and Firefox installed. My office environment uses Windows and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. One of the features of IE8 that I really like and often use are “Accelerators.” I would like to know if there are accelerators available for download for the most up-to-date versions of either Safari or Firefox.

A: Accelerators are a particular feature of IE8 that allows users to perform an action on a highlighted portion of a Web page—like mapping an address or translating a word—even using services provided by companies that compete with Microsoft. Microsoft has put a system in place for companies to write accelerators and users to download them.

Firefox, on both Windows and Mac, has a massive collection of add-ons, some of which work in a manner similar to Accelerators, but it doesn’t have a directly competing feature. Safari on your Mac also can accommodate added features from third-party companies, some of which can work like accelerators, but it also lacks a feature that specifically goes head to head with IE8′s Accelerators.

I am going to law school in the fall, and I was wondering which laptop you would suggest I get for this three- to four-year time period of my life?

A: It really depends on your priorities, resources and environment. If you’re on a tight budget, value lots of choice, and enjoy playing games during breaks from work, you might pick a modestly-priced Windows 7 laptop. However, I’d stay away from netbooks, which can be cramped for writing long documents. If you have more to spend, and value freedom from malware, great built-in software and the convenience of dedicated stores, you might buy an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro. But I would also recommend asking the school and current students, since it can be advantageous, or even necessary, to be using a laptop that the school prefers or that runs any special software the school requires.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Cuts at Adobe (ADBE) will occur worldwide and are intended to bring costs in line with its 2010 budget and “the realities of the business environment,” the company said in a statement. They follow a similar round of cuts made in 2008 that claimed the livelihoods of about 600 people.

The company today announced plans to reduce its newsroom staff by eight percent by the end of 2009. Cuts will be made by buyout, but the company will resort to layoffs should its hand be forced.

“As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs,” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in a note to employees. I hope that won’t happen, but it might. I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.”

Sad, sad news for a storied newspaper and an imperiled industry.

Keller’s memo in full, below:

Colleagues,

I had planned to invite you to the newsroom and break this news in person today, but I’ve been hit by something that seems to be the flu. Though I strongly believe in delivering bad news in person, I don’t want to add insult to injury by spreading infection.

Let me cut to the chase: We have been told to reduce the newsroom by 100 positions between now and the end of the year.

We hope to accomplish this by offering voluntary buyouts. On Thursday, the Company will be sending buyout offers to everyone in the newsroom. Getting a buyout package does NOT mean we want you to leave. It is simply easier to send the envelopes to everyone. If you think a buyout may be right for you, you have up to 45 days to decide whether you will accept it or not.

As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs. I hope that won’t happen, but it might.

Our colleagues in editorial and op-ed, and on the business side, also face another round of budget cuts.

In recent years, we’ve managed to avoid the disabling cutbacks that have hit other newsrooms. The Company has chosen to protect the journalism by cutting production and other business-side costs, and the newsroom itself has managed its resources frugally. These latest cuts will still leave us with the largest, strongest and most ambitious editorial staff of any newsroom in the country, if not the world.

I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. But we’ve been looking hard at ways to minimize the impact–in part, by re-engineering some of our copy flow. I won’t promise this will be easy or painless, but I believe we can weather these cuts without seriously compromising our commitment to coverage of the region, the country and the world. We will remain the single best news organization on earth.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by the fact of this, but it is happening sooner than anyone anticipated. When we took our 5 percent pay cuts, it was in the hope that this would fend off the need for more staff cuts this year. But I accept that if it’s going to happen, it should be done quickly. We will get through this and move on.

In my absence, Bill Schmidt and John and Jill have volunteered to take your questions this afternoon. Feel free to bring additional questions to me as soon as I’m back, or check with Bill Schmidt or John or Jill privately, or save them for the next Throw Stuff at Bill session, which is in a couple of weeks.

We often–and rightly–voice our gratitude that we work for a company and a family that prize quality journalism above all. I hope you know that the company and the family, and I, feel an equal debt of gratitude to all of you whose sacrifice and loyalty have kept us strong.

Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.

Bill

Analyst Imran Khan says he talked to 20 ad buyers and planners, who control a collective $1.6 billion in ad spending, and they tell him that they’ll spend more in the second half of 2009 than they did in the first six months. But that’s not useful information, since ad spending is traditionally weighted that way.

More tellingly, Khan’s correspondents tell him they think spending will be “roughly flat to down” in the last six months of 2009, compared to 2008. And as we’ve discussed before, ad spending started plummeting in the second half of 2008. So if it isn’t improving now, that’s unpleasant news.

More pleasant: Things should get better next year:

2010 ad budgets are looking positive. 25% of respondents see upside of 5-9% in 2010 and an additional 25% see upside of 10-14% vs. 2009. Approximately 40% think that ad spend in 2010 will be roughly flat with 2009 levels.

Looking for more concrete data? Wait a week. Earnings season kicks into high gear Thursday, Oct. 15, when Google (GOOG) hands in its Q3 report card; in the following weeks we’ll also get updates from big media players, including Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner (TWX).

Alas, it’s not profitable. Spiegelman says he spends considerably less than $1,000 for each one-minute episode, and the 50 episodes he’s made so far have generated some four million views since February. But advertising for the series, sold via Web video distributor blip.tv, doesn’t cover his costs.

Spiegelman is pretty sanguine about this, but I find it a bit frustrating. We’re several years into the Web video era–almost three years after Google (GOOG) bought YouTube–and this is the kind of stuff that should work by now. It’s original, ad-friendly, and made on a shoestring budget. If that can’t work, what will?

In any case, Spiegelman can afford to wait a bit for things to right themselves. His company, Jetpack Media, is a unit of indie movie studio Greenstreet Films, so he has a bit of a cushion while he figures out how to crack the code.

And in the meantime, he’s hedging his bets by using his Web series as a way to get back into old media, where you can actually get paid for stuff you make, in advance.

Spiegelman has repackaged the first season of his clips into DVD form, which will be sold by First Run Features (you can pre-order the first disc for $19.95).

Next up: A book deal with Bertelsmann’s Random House, via its Villard imprint, with photos from Gawker contributor Nikola Tamindzic (anyone who follows the blog-to-book minimarket will not be surprised to learn that ICM agent Kate Lee brokered the deal).

And Spiegelman can imagine other ancillary products down the line. Perhaps an audio show based on jokes that people submit via a hotline. Use your imagination. Which I guess is what you have to do if you want to make a living making Web video in 2009.

Oh, the videos themselves? They’re a lot of fun. You may have heard of a few of the joke-tellers–former New York City Mayor Ed Koch is a contributor/performer, as is real estate mogul Harry Macklowe–but the rest are fairly anonymous types who have a way with a story and a punch line. Below, a quick interview I taped with Spiegelman last week, and below that, a few of the joke-tellers themselves (Warning! These feature a couple of judiciously chosen curses).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090917/how-to-make-money-with-web-video-books-and-dvds/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090814/massive-aol-layoffs-not-imminent-but-top-to-bottom-cost-exam-definitely-in-process/ http://allthingsd.com/20090814/massive-aol-layoffs-not-imminent-but-top-to-bottom-cost-exam-definitely-in-process/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:35:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17611

After a while–in a BoomTown mangling of the old cliché–if you are a nail, everything begins to look like a hammer.

So, it is probably inevitable that the next thing for much-beleaguered AOL staffers to start rumbling about is 2,000 people getting laid off next week, as was reported earlier this week by Silicon Alley Insider.

After all, the Time Warner (TWX) unit has a long history of whacking employees. So, it is easier to assume things will not be different under the regime of the latest CEO Tim Armstrong.

Except it’s not actually true that such massive cuts are in the offing, since–as many sources I spoke to said–Armstrong is only in the early part of figuring out what to do about the cost structure of AOL, after laying out a company strategy and rejiggering management recently.

While the end result of the cost-to-benefit analysis might, in all likelihood, mean layoffs of a chunk of its 7,000 employees–a larger number for its smaller operations.

And, after all, staff costs are one of the biggest line items in AOL’s budget–sources at the company said Armstrong will not rely on simply cutting jobs to craft a more attractive budget for its upcoming spinoff.

Still, there is obviously a lot of pressure on Armstrong to get the financials–which are still largely dependent on AOL’s declining, but money-generating, access business–looking pretty.

That access business did almost $2 billion in revenue last year–about half its sales–and it represented almost all its profits.

In contrast, AOL’s advertising business lagged, dropping hugely over the last several quarters.

Still, Armstrong has laid out a strategy that has included, in part:

Being a new kind of content giant, via a series of branded niche media sites, with about 500 full-time writers and editors and 1,500 freelancers; selling premium display advertising on these sites and strengthening its third-party self-service ad network business; finding a way to use its communications properties to redistribute traffic to other properties in a kind of virtuous circle.

There are also local, analytical and venture elements. But–for all intents and purposes–Armstrong’s plan is a content-and-advertising model, supported for now by the dwindling piles of cash from the access business.

That’s why, of course, costs are the next item on Armstrong’s to-do list.

“The cost structure is the last part of what was going to be dealt with, as Tim has told everyone,” said one person close to the situation about the former Google (GOOG) exec. “But, if it is slash-and-burn only, that would be pretty short-sighted.”

Perhaps, except that it is that exact tactic that has been business-as-usual at AOL for far too long.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090814/massive-aol-layoffs-not-imminent-but-top-to-bottom-cost-exam-definitely-in-process/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090702/and-for-you-mr-mcnamee-ah-yes-the-boiled-crow-sandwich/ http://allthingsd.com/20090702/and-for-you-mr-mcnamee-ah-yes-the-boiled-crow-sandwich/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:01:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20657

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

– Palm investor Roger McNamee

Palm (PALM) seems to have satiated pent-up early demand for its new Pre smartphone, constrained supplies be damned. In a pair of investor notes issued today, analysts at Pali Research and JP Morgan say that sales of the Pre have tapered off to a point where supply and demand are roughly in parity.

“We have concluded our 3rd round of channel checks for the Pre,” writes JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster, who notes that demand for the handset is hovering at about 40,000 per week. “The gap between supply and demand has closed at Sprint and BestBuy stores, waitlists are eliminated or down, and most stores now have Pre devices in stock.”

Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk also surveyed the Pre landscape and reached a similar conclusion, though he sees the slowing of sales as a bit more pronounced. “We believe that Palm Pre sales have slowed over the past week for Sprint to under 40,000 from 50,000-60,000 last week,” he writes. “…We suspect that if sales continue to moderate, Sprint would increase its marketing budget for the product. The marketing budget behind the product has been somewhat limited to date compared to the marketing push that Apple does.”

Indeed. And let’s not forget that Apple (AAPL) has a new handset on the market that’s been selling quite well. Makes you wonder if this ebb in demand for the Pre is somehow related.

Guess it’s looking like Palm investor Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion aren’t going to quite pan out.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090702/and-for-you-mr-mcnamee-ah-yes-the-boiled-crow-sandwich/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090610/cios-the-econalypse-ate-our-2009-budgets/ http://allthingsd.com/20090610/cios-the-econalypse-ate-our-2009-budgets/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:30:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=19260 No surprises here. The econalypse has sent IT managers scrambling to redraft their already diminished 2009 budgets. About 42 percent of chief information officers have cut their budgets to grapple with the souring economy, according to a new survey by Gartner (IT). However, 54 percent have kept their budgets flat and an enviable four percent have actually raised them. Gartner reports that in March and April of this year, budgets declined by a weighted average of 4.7 percent. That’s quite a bit different from the firm’s earlier prediction of generally flat spending for the first quarter of 2009. As Gartner’s Mark McDonald told Forbes, “It’s almost as if Jan. 1 started on April 1. [CIOs] re-did their plans in the first quarter once they understood what the global financial crisis would mean to them.”

Interesting. So, given the continuing volution of the financial crisis, can we expect further budget adjustments in the future? McDonald doesn’t think so. “CIOs gave us every indication that the budgets they have now are the budgets they will have for the rest of the year,” he said. “The number who have a contingency plan is only about half, and most of those CIOs don’t believe they’re going to have to execute those contingency plans….Of the CIOs we surveyed, 38% expect to see a recovery by September 2010, and another 32% expect a recovery by March of 2010. Only 24% said it would be beyond September 2010.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090610/cios-the-econalypse-ate-our-2009-budgets/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090515/spring-fever-more-very-very-cautious-optimism-for-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20090515/spring-fever-more-very-very-cautious-optimism-for-media/#comments Fri, 15 May 2009 12:53:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7414 News out of the traditional publishing industry is grim, but if you broaden your perspective and look at the rest of the media business, things are starting to look… not horrible.

Granted, “not horrible” doesn’t equal “good times are here again.” But I keep hearing that the sickening decline in advertising spending has stopped, at least, and that some marketers are actually spending money again.

Here are a couple more bits of anecdotal evidence:

The newest Advertiser Optimism Reports conducted by Advertiser Perceptions Inc., show that ad buyers are slightly more optimistic than they were a few months ago. MediaPost:

“The most recent survey suggests that the degree of ad budget pessimism may have bottomed out, or at the very least, is leveling off. The average for all media shows that 29% or ad executives expect to increase and 29% expect to decrease their ad spending over the next six months. That’s a marginal improvement from two months ago, when only 26% planned to boost their budgets, while 30% planned to cut them.”

And from Wall Street, a little more cautious optimism: Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente has upgraded his outlook and/or his price targets on a swath of entertainment stocks–Time Warner (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), Scripps Network Interactive (SNI), Viacom (VIA) and CBS (CBS).

That’s in part because DiClemente also thinks advertising–or at least TV advertising–has bottomed out. He now thinks broadcast TV ad dollars will increase by four percent in 2010, up from a previous estimate of minus-one percent, and that cable TV will increase 5.5 percent, up from two percent.

It’s easy enough to be skeptical of this stuff, especially any happy talk about TV, given that we’re now in the “upfront” season when network executives do their best to convince buyers that sales are hotter than ever. But wouldn’t it be nice if they were right?

[Image credit: Iragerich]

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