June 11, 2009 by Jenny Sanderson
After the Palm Pre finally went on sale last Saturday, the question on the SmartPhone industry’s collective lips this week has been, was the launch a success? The answer… Too early to say. In total, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 phones were sold. This sounds impressive and represents the single best weekend of sales ever for Sprint Nextel (the phone’s exclusive mobile carrier), though is it all smoke and mirrors?
One thing that’s been pointed out is that, despite months of fevered publicity, the Pre failed to generate the kind of crowds that have greeted the release of the G1, the iPhone and even new Blackberries in recent years. In my opinion, an unfair comparison, for one thing, Palm doesn’t have the brand strength that Apple enjoy (no one does), so they were always going to come of second best there, they also don’t have the gimmick of the first ever specific mobile phone OS, like the G1 did.
Also, the technology behind SmartPhones is now pretty old – the law of diminishing returns is going to be a factor, as is the fact that many of the people who were ever going to get one of these phones already have one. As a result, I don’t really think we can judge the Pre on launch hype as it’s just not a level playing field.
What will be crucial for Palm is whether or not they can keep up the momentum for the next few weeks. This may be hampered by the fact that demand has outstripped supply, meaning that, in the words of Tim Donahue, vice president of business marketing – Sprint, “There will be constrained inventory for some time. And there will be spot shortages for the foreseeable future.”
The Pre has been touted as a hybrid of both the Blackberry and the IPhone. It’s touch screen and similar in functionality to an iPhone, though it also has a slide out keyboard and the ability to run several programmes at once, which is expected to appeal to the business users who keep Blackberry afloat.
Overall, I think that Palm have reason to be cautiously optimistic, a possible 100,000 in sales over a weekend is not to be sneezed at and the press have, thus far, been incredibly kind. It could be that Palm is back.
Related posts:
