Palm stock upgraded; Cramer completes opinion reversal

Standing in stark contrast to many of his earlier calls on Palm, Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money has executed a complete 180 on the stock and now endorses it as a buy (albeit speculative) on the long-term prospects of smartphone adoption. Says Cramer, “There’s a lot of dispute about whether Verizon will support Palm; I think they will. Right now Sprint supports Palm. I think once Palm gets applications you’ll be in good shape. ... I think Palm is a long term winner in the ‘internet tsunami,’ I bless it.” Too bad he didn’t see the potential in Palm earlier and kept many out of the stock when it was still dirt cheap.

Cramer’s not alone in the Palm love, with investment bank Piper Jaffray maintaining their “overweight” (buy more) rating on the stock. Piper Jaffray also raised their price target for Palm from $18 to $24. An analyst with the bank said:

“We believe webOS provides Palm the ability to incorporate a high level of integration between hardware and software elements in its handsets, thus providing a very compelling user experience. Further, with the convergence of the Web and mobile phones, we believe webOS is gaining developer interest and Palm has a unique strategy to attract developers to the platform through enabling developers to market their applications. We anticipate strong growth in the developer ecosystem as Palm ships a family of webOS products longer-term.”

Palm closed Thursday at $17.01, up $0.57 (3.47%) for the day. From the $1.42 low on December 5, 2008, Palm is up a stunning 1098%. Year-to-date, Palm is up 454%.

Thanks to Sharon for the tip!