RIM's woes helping Palm

The San Jose Mercury News writes that Palm has been reaping the benefits of Research in Motion's legal problems, selling "564,000 Treos in the previous quarter, more than double the same quarter's totals the year before."

Neil Strother at NPD Group said, "They might have some temporary or shorter-term upside. If I'm a Palm investor, I might go, 'What's the future?' The upside future for them is to be in the phone business, and that's a cutthroat business."

The article mentions that the new Treo 700p based on the Palm OS is coming soon with other smartphones to be launched later in the year.

Gartner analyst Todd Kort said, "There are probably 15 to 20 million people with Palm OS experience. It is important to continue to mine that installed base." Gartner estimates the market for mobile e-mail devices will grow to 100 million people worldwide by 2009.

NPD's Strother pointed out that other manufacturers are targeting this market and cited Nokia's E61 and Motorola's Q as "BlackBerry clones." He said, "Those guys can produce millions in a month. It's not to say that RIM is dead, or Palm, but the competition just becomes that much more fierce."