Palm said it shipped more than twice the number of devices it sold during its third fiscal quarter as sales of its hallmark devices, the Pre and the Pixi, continue to struggle.
The handset maker said it shipped 960,000 units during the quarter but sold just 408,000 units, a 15 percent drop from the same period last year.
Palm Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Doug Jeffries said in an earnings call transcribed by Seeking Alpha that the company was working with carriers to reduce their overstocked inventory of Palm devices.
“Sell-through, rather than revenue, will be the real measure of our success,” he said.
Palm’s fourth quarter sales are expected to be half that of third quarter sales at $150 million.
Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein admitted that the company’s underperformance was “very disappointing” but said the company was making progress on future products and expressed optimism about the company’s webOS platform.
Among tough questions from analysts about the company’s low fourth-quarter forecast and significant inventory overhand, Rubinstein said the launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus with Verizon suffered from poor training.
“It became clear to us shortly after the Verizon launch that our training efforts had been insufficient,” he said. “Verizon had been shipping other products and then had recently gotten their newest products, which they had spent extensive time invested in training for. [I] just don’t think our training was sufficient enough when we got off… we are aggressively moving to fix that right now.”
The company posted sales of $349.9 million, exceeding recent warnings that third-quarter revenue would come in between $285 million to $310 million on slower than expected sales. The company also managed to narrow its losses to $22 million, from $98 million last year.
Palm’s stock fell over 18 percent in morning trading.
