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Even after a 72 percent drop in smartphone revenue from last year, Palm's grim quarterly numbers didn't keep CEO Ed Colligan from being upbeat about the potential of Palm's upcoming Pre to save the embattled mobile device maker's bottom line.

For its third fiscal quarter of 2009, the company reported a net loss of $98 million, or 89 cents a share, on revenue of $90.6 million -- a 71 percent drop from $312 million in revenue for the same quarter a year ago. Revenue from Palm's smartphone business fell 72 percent to $77.5 million.

Last quarter, Palm's saw $191.6 million in revenue and posted a net loss of $80.2 million, or 73 cents per share.

Even though the company had earlier warned investors about its anemic performance for third quarter, shares of Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) fell by almost 5 percent after yesterday's earnings call, which did not include a specific launch date for the much-anticipated Pre.

Still, Colligan did say that the Pre was on schedule for release before July, and that the company was working closely with developers and with the phone's U.S. wireless carrier, Sprint, to ensure a seamless market entry.

"There's no showstoppers," Colligan said during a call with analysts. "We plan on delivering on the time frame we said we would."

He also promised a dedicated product line built on webOS, the operating system at the heart of the Pre.

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