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Times are tough for Palm but not as bad as Wall Street expected, so the outlook is a bit rosy for the smartphone maker.  Since the Palm Pre was launched after the close of Palm’s Q4 and is not included in the numbers, analysts seem to have hope for the company.  Indeed, after-hours trading brought Palm shares up as much as 16%, a vote of confidence not only in their webOS but also in their new CEO, John Rubenstein.

From ZDNet: “The company reported a quarterly loss of $53.4 million, or 40 cents per share, on sales of $113.2 million, excluding one-time items. Wall Street had been expecting a loss of 62 cents on revenue of $80.64 million. For Fiscal year 2009, the company reported a loss of $241.1 million, or $2.08 per share, excluding items.”

“The launch of Palm webOS and Palm Pre was a major milestone in Palm’s transformation; we have now officially reentered the race,” said Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Palm managed to ship 351,000 smartphones during the quarter representing a quarter to quarter increase of 6% but a year-to-year decrease of 62%.  Ouch.  The luster is definitely off Palm’s aged phones, huh?  These figures most likely show the backside of the Centro popularity curve as well as businesses holding out for something better than the older Palm OS and Windows Mobile OS Palm products.

Some real questions emerge, such as can the Pre make that much of an impact on the financials?  Is Palm eyeing a Centro replacement based on webOS for just $99 as we’ve seen?  If so, will it be offered to all Centro carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint)?  And if so, could a low-cost widely distributed phone spur developers into action to fill out the Palm app catalog?  Many chastise Apple for taking a while to open the SDK to everyone, but in hindsight having a captured audience may have been a very shrewd move as it beckons developers to code for an identified population.  Android and webOS don’t really have that luxury, yet.

One thing is certain: a company can only lose $50 million a quarter for so long.

Source: [Yahoo!]