Edible Apple

At Apple’s earnings conference call yesterday, Apple COO Tim Cook said that Apple was having a difficult time keeping up with demand for the new iPhone 3GS.  With that in mind, I wonder what Palm investor Roger McNamee thinks about Apple’s latest earnings report.

In early March of this year, McNamee went on the record and predicted that when the phone contracts of initial iPhone owners expire this summer, they’ll all be jumping ship for the Palm Pre.

”You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. 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.”

Well guess what, Rog, those original contracts have long since expired and those consumers are upgrading to the new iPhone in droves.  As for the Palm Pre, well, things aren’t looking so rosy.  While initial reviews of the device were for the most part positive, the Pre has been somewhat beleaguered by reports of cracked screens and a few more returns than they’re probably comfortable with.  The Pre admittedly stands out in growing smartphone market, but a true iPhone competitor it is not.

MG Siegler of TechCrunch provides us with the following chart with helps put the success of the Palm Pre into a more lucid perspective.

Yikes.  It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that that graph is anything but encouraging.  Siegler has more in-depth information about normalizing Pre sales over here.