Techcrunch is reporting that Palm’s stock is down over 10% while the Nasdaq is down only 1.5%.

This is most like due to the anemic sales of the Palm Pre – or “Palm Savior” – over the weekend.

Many are blaming “shortages” to explain why Palm only sold 50,000 units (versus 146,000 for the original iPhone weekend).

And that’s reasonable. After all, how could Palm have possibly predicted the shortages, just because they picked the date and managed the rollout and built the hype and controlled the manufacturing and dealt with the press and were pretty much in the driver’s seat for the last few months.

Memo to marketers: Don’t take on the biggest, baddest player in your field if you’re not prepared to do battle for the long haul.

-J