Palm – “Hopeful - cautiously optimistic”

Pros

Hot new development. Former rock star company. Encouraging potential.

Palm has been through roughly three big phases. Early, they were rock star innovative, extremely well known, with killer products. Later, they grew fat and complacent, fell behind in the market, survived by buying out their most direct competition, and let product quality plummet. Current refinancing gives them the ability to produce a fresh product. Both financing and interest exist. Engineering team is good, although perhaps a bit flaky. There's a brief opportunity right now to participate in making what could be a key turning point for the company.

Cons

Cronyism. Weak vision and marketing. It's not clear that the product or approach they're taking are sufficiently innovative, that product quality is a sufficient priority, nor that timing of delivery will hit well. There's a lot of unknown right now and for all that, there's still a curious level of risk being taken and an odd perspective on vision.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to coordinate itself a little better. I'm not seeing much evidence of teamwork in upper engineering management.