Palm Lays Off 10% of Workforce

Missteps, growing competition plague smart phone maker

By Jane Yager, Newser Staff

Posted Dec 14, 2007 8:12 AM CST

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Palm Lays Off 10% of Workforce — A Palm Treo 700 phone on display at a Verizon store in Salinas, Calif., Monday, June 4, 2007. Smartphone maker Palm Inc. will sell a 25 percent stake to private equity firm Elevation Partners for $325 million and name the former technical guru behind the iPod to be chairman, the company said Monday.... (Associated Press)

Palm, the struggling maker of the Treo smart phone, laid off more than 100 of its 1,150 worldwide employees this week as part of an expense-cutting restructuring. The company, facing stiffening competition, has compounded its recent woes with product launch delays and the September cancellation of the Foleo portable computer, AP reports.

Palm's fiscal second-quarter results, to be posted Tuesday, are expected to be worse than anticipated, due in part to another product launch delay. Palm now expects a second-quarter loss of 22 cents to 24 cents per share, compared to an earlier projection of a 1- to 3-cent-per-share loss. (More Palm stories.)

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