Following an interview last week with Bloomberg in which a key Palm investment partner and board member made disparaging remarks about the iPhone, Palm has filed a form with the SEC formally withdrawing the statements. Roger McNamee, Managing Director & Co-Founder of Elevation Partners, which owns 39% of Palm, and board member of Palm, Inc., said of the iPhone, “our product’s 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.” Palm noted in its statement that the Pre is “still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.”
Perhaps more noteworthy was McNamee’s claim that “not one” original iPhone purchaser will remain an iPhone user once their contract expires. “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” McNamee said. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it—If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.” In its filing, Palm said this statement was “an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.”