Palm CEO live on Bloomberg TV - transcript

[Colin Dunstan]

A day before the Consumer Electronics Show opened, Palm CEO Edward Colligan talked on Bloomberg TV about the Treo 700w and competitor RIM. Here is the transcript:

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BOWDON: I'm here with Ed Colligan of Palm. Welcome to Bloomberg Television.

COLLIGAN: Thank you.

BOWDON: Let's first talk about the last 12 months, which have been positive for Palm. Your stock is up about 13 percent. And for a lot of people, it has to do with the problems over at RIM, because they've had difficulty with intellectual property suits, with this NTP, the NTP company claiming that they had taken intellectual property away from RIM. For many there was a chilling effect, that some companies may be moving away from RIM and towards Palm because of that. Did you see that?

COLLIGAN: No. We've seen enormous growth in our business, really, I think, as a result of our products and the success they've had in the marketplace. We had a 34 percent growth year- over-year last year. We have great revenue growth this year. We've had 10 consecutive quarters of profitability. And it's really driven by people turning to the Treo, mostly, in competition with RIM. Certainly we've seen some companies who have become aware of those - sorry - become aware of those suits, and certainly are more interested to look at our solutions, but they have been for some time. Good Technology, a solution provider of ours, has more than 8,000 installations of Treo-Good combinations, which is a competitive product to the RIM solution.

BOWDON: OK. So, you've heard them mention that as a possible reason, but you don't think it's the main reason.

COLLIGAN: It's not a - it really hasn't been a driver for our business. We've seen some recently good wins in the enterprise marketplace.

BOWDON: Can you give us examples?

COLLIGAN: But frankly - well - but RIM had a reasonable quarter this quarter. So, you know, it's not - I don't see them not having some successes. Well, I think what you're seeing is just overall growth of people turning to solutions like this as productivity tools in their enterprise.

BOWDON: Give us an example of some of the recent ?

COLLIGAN: Oh, boy. Starbucks, Cisco. These are companies that have deployed this to their sales forces out in the field. They use them to get instant access to e-mail, yes access to e-mail. It's a phone too. It makes it really easy to, you know, manage your calendar, your contacts, your tasks. It's a really powerful computer in your pocket. It basically allows you to do all the core activities.

BOWDON: Sorry about the announcements. Thanks, you're a good sport for continuing through this. Let me ask you about the new Treo you're coming out - you're working on with Microsoft.

COLLIGAN: Yes.

BOWDON: Is it CE-based?

COLLIGAN: Well, it's Windows Mobile-based. CE is an old term that they use for talking about their platform. They now name it all Windows Mobile. It's a Window Mobile 5.0 version of the platform. And one of the great advantages of it is we've been able to differentiate on top of it. So, we bring the Palm user experience to that Windows Mobile platform, which is really unique. Most companies just take the software from Microsoft and put it in the ROM, and whatever you get out of that is what you get. What we've done is added our secret sauce on top of it to make it easier to be a phone and to interact with the applications on the device than any other Windows Mobile device.

BOWDON: Now, talk about the - I understand you're planning on continuing to sell the Treo 650, which is Palm OS-based. But will you be developing further Palm OS based Treos ?

COLLIGAN: Absolutely.

BOWDON: ? or is this the end of that line?

COLLIGAN: No. Absolutely. We will have further Palm OS-based products. We really think one of our advantages is the multi-platform nature of our business, especially in regard to our carrier partners, you know, the operators that sell our products, like Verizon and Cingular and Sprint. They want to come to a company that has both of those, you know, platforms so they can offer a solution to their customers, but have a consistent user experience so that their training and their call centers and all of these guys know how these devices work and can help their customers with them.

BOWDON: We're out of time, but Ed Colligan, President and CEO of Palm, thanks for being with us on Bloomberg.

COLLIGAN: Thank you.