According to Bloomberg.com, Ed Colligan says that he's not worried about calls regarding any takeover of Palm. Colligan is concentrating on sales and winning back sales that were lost to RIM and Nokia.
"I can't sit here and worry about that," he said in an interview at Palm's Sunnyvale, California, headquarters. "I can only worry about how the business is performing and what can we do as a team to do better, to get our products out faster, to drive for higher reliability, to grab more market share."
And Palm is working on getting their products out faster by a design change. They spent the past two years copying a design from larger rivals including Nokia that includes a standardized core to cut production costs and get handsets built faster. Using the same base in all its phones will let Palm create a new handset in nine months, down from as much as two years, Colligan said. New devices built this way go on sale this year, he said.
According to Stephane Maes, a director in charge of Palm's product lines, this design change allows Palm to use fewer parts and buy larger quantities of a single component, cutting material costs by 30 percent. Palm will also save on development costs as individual devices won't be built from scratch.
Maes added that those costs savings may open up markets beyond business users. Palm may be able to sell phones for as little as $99 with a contract, down from as much as $399 currently. Well, wouldn't that be nice! ;-)
So Ed Colligan is ignoring takeover calls while the rumor mills continue to turn. And Palm users wonder what will happen next. I'm very curious to see what new Treos are around the corner. I guess if there is any news, we might find out something tomorrow at the Analyst and Investor Day that Palm is hosting.
