How Palm's Treo Got Boost From BlackBerry Lawsuit

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Palm ramped up its marketing campaign for its Treo smartphone while rival Research in Motion was embroiled in a patent fight, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The result: at least 1,500 new inquiries about the Treo in the past few months from corporate customers, resulting in 600 free trials, Palm says. In total, Palm says it has more than doubled its number of sales leads since October. "The doors have been opening," says Ed Colligan, Palm's chief executive. At a November staff meeting, Mr. Colligan says he told his staff to "step things up. We have to go back and knock on doors and respond as fast as we can." ... Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.'"

Comments

Oversimplified conclusions

[moochfish]

In the quarter ended in late November, Palm sold 602,000 Treos, nearing the 645,000 new subscriber accounts that RIM signed on in the same period.

Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.

Here's what's happened so far:

1. Company's reliability goes into question
2. Consumers look for alternatives

This is what Palm is hoping is #3:

3. Competitors overtake market

However, this is what is really happening:

3. Company's reliability no longer in question
4. Consumers stop looking for alternatives

Yeah. Maybe they would have outsold Blackberrys had the lawsuit kept on chugging or RIM lost. Unfortunately for Palm, that did not happen. Whatever edge they had during the lawsuit is now gone. How can you predict continued growth when the market changed in the past month with the conclusion of the lawsuit?