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Cue the Batman “oooffff” and “Bam!”  Palm issued a statement yesterday attempting to set analyst expectations on the company’s performance or lack thereof.  In releasing their preliminary Q3 results, Palm shed light on the bad news but also some good news.

The bad news, was pretty ugly.  Instead of turning in the $155 million in sales that the street expected, Palm put up a limp $85 to $90 million.  Times are tough, the Palm Treo Pro has had issues getting to market and the company hopes slack demand is sign of pent-up demand for the Pre.  Normally, I’d jump on companies for blaming their losses on pent-up demand, but in the case of the Pre, I’d bet there are a lot of the loyal Palm army holding off on replacements for the Pre.

This loss shows Palm burned through most of the money recently raised, about $100 million.  CEO Ed Colligan says expenses in developing the Pre and the webOS are putting a strain on company resources, but he sees a path forward in a successful Pre launch.  An awful lot is riding on this phone.

In its statement, Palm said they expect to defer some of the costs of R&D on the Pre over the two year life span or “products economic lifespan.”  It is safe to say that we’ll see the Pre on the market for a solid 24 months, something not even the mighty iPhone did.  Two years does seem like a longer than normal product cycle for a cell phone but I suspect the Pre2 will launch at the end of year one and they’ll fire sale the original model for the second year.

“The much-anticipated launch of the Palm Pre remains on track for the first half of calendar year 2009, but as expected we’ve got a difficult transition period to work through,” said Palm President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan.

It is always darkest right before the dawn, eh Colligan?  This is one heck of a bet Palm investors have made, will it pay off?

Read [Yahoo!] via [ZDNet]