Palm Files for Clarifications and Corrections on McNamee Interviews

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We learned via Palm Infocenter that in an unusual SEC filing, Palm has composed a free writing prospectus on the subject of Roger McNamee's recent Bloomberg March 5th TV Interview and following article.  Both the interview and the article discussed Palm and the Palm Pre smartphone.
: E9 I0 U1 C9 r3 b; s/ d) jTheinterview and article published by Bloomberg were not prepared by orreviewed by Palm prior to their broadcasting and publication, andBloomberg isn't affiliated with either Palm or Elevation, nor did Palmor Elevation make any payment or give any consideration to Bloomberg inconnection with the broadcast of the interview. So Palm wanted toclarify some statements in the interview or article that were not madedirectly by Mr. McNamee, which represent Bloomberg's or others'opinions, and are not endorsed by Palm or Elevation.
Below are the Clarifications and Corrections
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For purposes of clarification, it should be noted that:
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• Althoughmarket share estimates such as those in the fourth paragraph of thetranscript that “Blackberry’s global market share is about 1.2%, andApple’s is about 0.9 of 1%” are, by their nature, approximations, onethird party industry analyst report indicates that in 2007 and 2008,Blackberry’s share of worldwide mobile phone shipments was 1.1% and1.9%, respectively, and Apple’s was 0.3% and 1.2%, respectively.
• Withrespect to the statement in the fourth paragraph of the transcript that“in the US, smart phones went from 10% to 20% just in the last year,”one third party industry analyst report indicates that smart phonesmade up 11.1% of U.S. mobile phone shipments in 2007 and 19.5% in 2008.
• Withrespect to the statement in the fourth paragraph of the transcript thatsmartphones are anticipated to increase their share of the U.S. mobilephone market to “50% within 5 years,” one third party industry analystreport estimates smartphone share of the U.S. mobile phone market willreach 42.0% in 2012.
• With respect to the statement in thefourth paragraph of the transcript that “this is a huge market: 1.2billion units sold per year,” one third party industry analyst reportestimates worldwide mobile phone shipments exceeded 1.2 billion in 2008.
• Withrespect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript thatthe Palm Pre is “going to be a million times – well, not a milliontimes – several times faster” than Apple, Inc.’s iPhone products and is“going to run rings around them on the web,” the Palm Pre is stillunder development and it is premature to state the speed at which thedevice accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre comparedto the smartphone products of competitors.
• With respect to thestatements in the twelfth paragraph of the transcript that “there areaspects 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 resultis it does a lot of things the others guys don’t do,” the Palm Pre isdesigned to be the first phone based on the Palm webOS™ platform and asa result will have different operating characteristics and featuresthan other phones, however; the Palm Pre is still under development andit is premature to compare its full functionality with that of otherphones.
• The statements in the fourteenth paragraph of thetranscript regarding the relative development and stability ofSprint’s, Verizon’s and AT&T’s 3G networks are generalizationsregarding wireless cellular network performance that may or may not betrue depending on a variety of factors specific to geographic regions .
• Thestatement in the second paragraph of the article that “not one” personwho bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date “will stillbe using an iPhone a month” after the two-year anniversary of that dayis an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and iswithdrawn.
• With respect to the statements in the second to lastparagraph of the article that “the underlying technology for ResearchIn Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry is about 13 years old, while the technologybehind the iPhone goes back almost nine years,” estimating one specificage for the many technology components underlying any mobile phone isinherently imprecise and these statements are withdrawn.
• Withrespect to the implications in the second to last and last paragraphsof the article that Palm’s new operating system will give it an edgeover competitors that “are going to run out of gas way before” Palm,estimations of the relative useful lifespan of smartphone operatingsystems are conjecture, unverifiable at this time, and age is notnecessarily predictive of their relative long-term success.

You can read the full SEC document here.
2 _0 i% X/ ?2 h: j4 ]Whatdo you think about these clarifications and corrections?  Did Roger saytoo much?  Is he still your Hero? He's still mine!  McNamee'sstatements about the Pre being several times faster than the iPhone 3Gcertainly stirred up some interesting conversations. ;-)

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