Palm Inc, the smartphone maker which has been in trouble recently due to its market share loss as a result of the fierce competition from its rivals Research in Motion or RIM and Apple Inc has announced a cut in its workforce.
According to Lynn Fox, a spokeswoman for Palm, this week saw the beginning of the lay off. She however refused to divulge the exact figures. Palm which manufactures the Treo and Centro Smartphones has employee strength of 1050. With RIM’s Blackberry taking away a major share of business and Apple’s iPhone being the consumer preference, Palm has recently witnessed a rapid shrink in its market share.
Fox said the goal of the company now was to focus effectively on efforts by consolidating resources. Future of Palm as much as rests on the launch of its device and operating system to be launched soon. This yet to be named OS will be released as per schedule this year and the device will be released in the first half of 2009 according to Fox.
Even as it tries to steady itself, the company has roped in John Ribinstein, the creator of iPod and Apple’s product development senior vice president Mike Bell. Competition however is increasing day by day in the smartphone market. Even as Palm announced its lay offs, people queued outside stores to purchase RIM’s touch screen phone Blackberry storm.
According to a recent data, only five percent of companies are planning on a Palm smartphone which is about half of last year’s figures.
