Struggling smartphone maker Palm said it lost $508.6 million in its second fiscal quarter of 2009, with revenue of $191.6 million. The former industry leader sold 599,000 devices, down 13% from last year.

“We’re working through an undeniably difficult period,” CEO Ed Colligan said.

In the summer this year, Palm’s bright spot was the entry-level Centro smartphone. Now the attention of Palm-watchers is on Nova, the code name for Palm’s upcoming Linux operating system, expected to be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas.

Considering its low position and increasingly tough competition, will the Linux approach enable Palm to – with apologies to Springsteen – burst just like a supernova?  Responding to a question from J.P. Morgan analyst Paul Coster about whether there’s still a chance for Palm to regain its cachet in the face of increasingly tough competition, “I think it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s early in the space. There’s an enormous amount of opportunity left,” Colligan said.

“If you look at just the replacement market in this business, every year there’s phenomenal numbers of even just replacement devices, so the chance that there’s not another opportunity ahead or we can’t build a platform position here I think is not real,” he added.