Gear

Palm Disowns Smack-Talking McNamee

Last week, Palm investor Roger McNamee said this in an interview with Bloomberg: “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.” Gadget Lab reader Theglenvoid commented on the smack-talk […]

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Last week, Palm investor Roger McNamee said this in an interview with Bloomberg: “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

Gadget Lab reader Theglenvoid commented on the smack-talk with this rather acute observation: “Either this guy is A) just spitting fightin’ words for the sake of press, B) a dumbass, or C) all of the above.”

It seems that Palm itself agrees with Theglenvoid, and it has issued a statement distancing itself from SmackNamee’s embarrassing words. You can read the whole of the document, which mostly fusses over problems with Bloomberg’s original piece. Or you could read this single point, which is pure comedy gold:

The statement in the second paragraph of the article that “not one” person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date “will still be using an iPhone a month” after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.

Actually, the document is worth taking a look at as it includes a transcript of the entire interview with McNamee, which is chock-full of other gaffes. For example:

[Apple] make great products. For media, they’re fantastic, but our product, the Palm Pre [is] just going to run rings around them on the web. If you want to go to the web, it’s just going to be a million times—well, not a million times—several times faster. [emphasis added]

Free Writing Prospectus [Palm via Engadget]

Photo: Jon Snyder

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