It is still somewhat a surprise that the company that led the PDA revolution and contributed to the smart phone revolution with the Treo is barely staying afloat. Palm in many ways owes the fact that it is still afloat to the low-priced Palm OS powered Centro.

The latest news from Palm amidst the news that it will be engaging in layoffs to deal with the bad economy in the U.S. is that they will only record $190 to $195 million in revenue, which is far from the expected ballpark number of $330 million in revenue.

The fact that the company is still able to compete at all has more to do with the fact that they have been able to deliver the Centro at low prices than anything else at this point. When you compare the Centro to the latest BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or iPhone the Palm-powered Centro looks like something from five years ago.

The best hope for Palm is the new Nova OS that the company says will arrive in the first half of 2009, but it looks like at this point that Palm may, in fact, need it sooner, as it could be the only hope to rescue the company which is on the brink.

Palm can’t survive on the Centro much longer and even if they were to launch a new Nova OS-powered phone it is difficult to say if the company could, in fact, do it soon enough to make much of a difference.

Many of the features of the Nova OS from Palm sound like they could be good, but with the loss of so much market share and the Centro on its last leg, and the latest Treo not selling at all…as unlikely as it may seem, you might have to stick a fork in Palm because they could be done.