Palm is laying off an undetermined number of its 1,050 workers this week in an effort to stem the effects of the economy and Palm’s decreasing smartphone market share. While it’s not a shock – everyone is doing it! – Palm now has to deal with RIM and Android eating their lunch and iPhone essentially stealing the entire casual smartphone market out from under it.
Reuters notes:
According to data released Thursday by ChangeWave, only 5 percent of companies plan to buy a Palm smartphone in the next quarter, half the figure from a year ago. By contrast, 78 percent of corporations planned to buy a RIM device and 22 percent an iPhone.
Sadly, that sounds about right.