Palm Pre's big day
NEW YORK--The much-anticipated Palm Pre may have gotten almost as much hype as the Apple iPhone over the past six months, but its opening day fell short of the attention iPhones grabbed on their first days.
The Sprint store in the Flatiron building on Manhattan's Fifth Ave. received nearly 200 Palm Pres for the launch.
(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET)Unlike the huge crowds of people that formed long lines and camped out in front of Apple and AT&T stores days in advance of the iPhone's launch, crowds for the Palm Pre were much smaller and tended to arrive in the morning just before stores opened.
Neither Sprint nor Palm have released official figures about how many devices they hoped to sell on the Pre's first day. But Sprint representatives had been trying to downplay expectations for iPhone-like crowds ahead of the launch. Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott told The New York Times earlier this week that the company not only didn't expect long lines for the Pre at its 1,100 stores, but that it didn't want them.
And it looks like the company got its wish. Salespeople at Sprint stores in New York City said a handful of people gathered outside their locations early Saturday morning. But most lines didn't even come close to the madness experienced on iPhone launch days.
Crowds tended to be bigger at Best Buy stores, which were offering the device for the $199 price without the $100 mail-in rebate. Customers buying a Pre from Sprint, the exclusive carrier of the device, pay $299 at the time of purchase and can get $100 back with a mail-in rebate. According to Rich Pesce, a Sprint spokesman, most new phones offered through the carrier have the mail-in rebate offer.
Many Best Buy locations sold out of the Pre almost immediately. But considering that Best Buy stores received far fewer devices for the launch than Sprint retail locations, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that they'd run out of inventory earlier than the Sprint stores. For example, the Best Buy store on 23rd Street in New York City got somewhere between 40 and 48 phones for Saturday's launch, while the Sprint store two blocks away on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron building received nearly 200 phones for the launch.
Even though the crowds and the hoopla may not have matched those of the iPhone, the Pre likely had a good first day. Sprint salespeople in Manhattan said they had a steady stream of customers for most of the day. And the Sprint store on Fifth Avenue only had six phones left as of 2:30 p.m. EDT Saturday.
(Credit:
CNET)
Since the Pre's debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, smartphone junkies have been closely tracking the device's progress as it moved toward commercial availability. Many of the people who showed up to Sprint's pre Pre-launch party in New York Friday said they had been following news and hype of the phone since it was announced.
Many of these new customers, including Mark McNulty of Westchester County, New York, are loyal Palm fans who have been long waiting for a new and better Palm smartphone.
"Palm has always had a long history as a smartphone company," he said. "And they've always been the best smartphone for calendars and handling work documents."
Pre's success is considered crucial for Palm, which was a pioneer in the smartphone market. But in the past couple of years, the company has been struggling to compete against other smartphone makers, namely Apple and Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry devices.
The Pre's success isn't just important to Palm. Sprint Nextel, which currently has an exclusive deal to carry the Pre, also has a lot riding on the success of the device. Sprint, the third largest wireless operator in the U.S., has been struggling to stem customer defections and repair a badly damaged reputation. At an event here Friday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse called the Pre Sprint's coming-out party for the company's enhanced wireless network and much improved customer support.
First impressions of the phone have been very positive. Reviewers, such as CNET's Bonnie Cha, have been impressed with Palm's new webOS, which powers the Pre. A key feature highlighted in her review is the Pre's ability to allow users to have multiple applications or Web pages open on the phone at once, something the Apple's iPhone doesn't allow.
A new Palm Pre customer gets a tutorial on her phone in a Sprint store in New York City.
(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET)Most reviewers agree that the Pre's software makes it a much stronger competitor to the iPhone than other touch-screen devices, such as the BlackBerry Storm. But no one is expecting the Pre to rival the iPhone in terms of sales, at least not initially while it's available on only one carrier's network.
Analysts have been all over the map in terms of sales expectations for the Pre, but Macquarie Securities analyst Philip Cusick thinks Palm and Sprint will likely sell about 1 million device a quarter. And he believes the company will sell about 6 million devices in fiscal 2011.
By comparison, AT&T activated roughly 2.4 million iPhone 3Gs in the first quarter it was available. About 1 million BlackBerry Bold devices were sold through AT&T in its first full quarter. And Verizon Wireless sold roughly 2 million BlackBerry Storms in its first quarter.
Meanwhile, Apple is not sitting still. The company is expected to announce a new iPhone next week at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Most iPhone watchers don't expect any major hardware enhancements, but there has been lots of chatter that Apple may announce a 4GB entry-level iPhone, as well as a 32GB video iPhone. These new phones, along with new enhancements to the iPhone OS, will likely make it even more difficult for the new Pre to compete.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
OMG, I'm going be accused of being a Palm fanboy...
You can get a 30-day trial of the Pre at Sprint, all you pay for is the service plan for that month. Then you can return the phone and they will give you all your money back, including your activication fees. That's what I'm gonna do, just to make sure that this phone beats WinMo.
If I can try a Pre for a month and return it, I can get one of the "free" phones or even a Blackberry Curve...or if I want to spend the money, a Treo Pro and wait for the kinks to get worked out of the Pre.
But, I'm an impulse buyer of sorts (do my research and know what I would like to get but actually make the purchase because I happen to see it in the store, in a good mood, my current product bothered me that day, etc.
If the Sprint store I went to had them in stock, I would have probably bought one and been perfectly happy. Now I have time to read reviews and such...second-guessing myself. If I can get the Classic emulator to let the Pre run ePocrates, Bejeweled, Patience (15 free solitaire games) and Agendus...I can wait for the rest! When Palms were THE PDAs, there was no shortage of software and it was developed quickly, so the small app store doesn't bother me. With Classic, there are lots of apps (likely not all) that can be run now.
Whatever I get...it will be nice to retire the RAZR V3 I've held onto for just over two years!
You cannot even search your email with a Pre! No visual voice mail (no video recording at all), No memory expansion, no use with corporate systems.
Pre is essentially an Instinct type phone, lots of hype, little real power.
But yea, HTC Touch Pro 2 is more powerful. Idk which I want. idk.
Wake up from the microwave trance.
Check out: http://www.wirelesswatchblog.com
I have to agree there probably weren't as many people in line to buy this phone as the Iphone. However, I think this phone will sell out almost everywhere before the close of business. I was at the Best Buy about 10 minutes after they were open and they were sold out already. I then found a sprint store (an hour away) that still had some. By the time I got there they only had 8 left. I guess what I am saying is the crowds might not be quiet as big but this is a huge success for Sprint and Palm.
P.S. the phone rocks and I think it is better then the stupid Iphone! Just my opinion :)
Good luck to Palm and the Pre as it is a reasonable competitor. But the reason the reason there were only a few available at each store is that Palm simply doesn't have the funds or credit to pay to "pre"-produce large numbers like the main players. If the Pre sells well, Palm will survive and prosper but that is not a given by any stretch. If the Palm is primarily selling to own client base of Treo owners, the goose will be cooked. The key indicators will be to see if it starts taking significant share in owners of Razors and other commodity phones. Fingers crossed.
OMG, Another iPhone copy cat..... like Steve Jobs said 2 years latter.........
Only problem, I wont buy either. This whole stuck to one provider bullcrap is hurting sales the sales growth of these phones. Its ridiculous you can only get a Pre through Sprint or an Iphone through AT&T. What a joke.
Yeah, kid. Apple just started developing the iPhone 3 last Thursday.
I'm just going to say it: you don't sound legit. You sound like a press release. A press release written by someone trying really hard to sound genuine. But like Nelly Olson on Little House on the Prairie, your over used sincerity gives you away.
I could not merely buy the phone and activate it. AND -- it was not $199 (with a rebate). It was $549 less $100 and less $150 since I was eligible for an upgrade. I thought it was supposed to be $299 less $100 rebate at Sprint.
It was pretty cool, but not a great deal.
I wanna get the 30-day risk-free trial thing, that sounds awesome.
Everything data 450, 900, Simply Everything
or Everything data family 1500, 3000
I attempted to buy a Pre today. Cost: $550 - $75 = $475 (!)
I haven't seen any mention of this in the mainstream press... This phone that is supposed to keep Sprint customers is just about causing me to leave.
$200 to break contract + $199 for iPhone = $399.
Let's see what's up on Monday....
Sure wish I could have tried the Palm Pre -- it really looked sharp & I wanted to try the Web OS to compare it to Windows Mobile.
I have had windows mobile phones and they suck in comparison to Web OS and the Pre
Multi-tasking on Windows mobile is different from the palm pre
the pre brings multi-tasking in a much more elegant and usuable way almost a desktop like fashion
plus one of Windows mobile biggest problems is the UI and crappy resistive touchscreen
so wats the point of all the features when you cant really use the phone properly !
yes apps on the pre are going to be a problem for now since the SDK isnt out !
but becasue of the closed environment they will work well on all pres
not like Windows mobile were it works awesome on one phone and on a other it crashes and burns
Windows Mobile is known to be slow and buggy mostly due to the crappy third party apps and multi-tasking actually
I would have bought a Pre today, but I am not changing the plan I have and my provider just because the Pre is Sprint only.
The deal killer for me was the size and feel of the slide out keyboard. Yes, similar in size to the already too small Centro's...but the keys are even flatter. I hammer out emails on my current Palm 800w...and a too-small keyboard is just not gonna cut it.
I'm shocked to hear BestBuy wasn't charging the extra $100 like the Sprint stores were. Another sign Sprint hasn't gotten their act together just yet.
but the thing is Iphone fans wont look past anything put the neat toy in their hands. I switched carriers for this phone and I have to say so far so good. The same if not better coverage
We all know that, especially with the iPhone.
Sprint compared to AT&T, Sprint wins.
The other was mail-in, why I don't know.
I carefully filled it out and sent it in the same day.
Several weeks later I received an e-mail saying it was being processed. Two weeks after that it was denied.
I never found out why, and fought with them about it, but never received it.
We all have iPhones are happy with AT&T.
NEVER going back to Sprint, as that wasn't the only problem with them.
And AT&T is a lot worse than Sprint, in terms of coverage, price, and more.
I'd challenge the idea that the iPhone and the Pre are competing at the same level. Apple was already a success with the latest Mac Books and iPods just prior to the iPhone coming out. They sunk tons of cash into slick marketing ads and generating developer interest before rolling the iPhone out.
Palm on the other hand has been fighting RIM and Apple for the last several years and losing. By comparison to Apple they are a wee, tiny, little company (maybe under a 1,000 people world wide). They've put considerably less into their marketing campaign than Apple. Plus people forget history.
When Apple first released the iPhone to the public in 2007 there weren't any 3rd party applications. The appstore was just a rumor at that point. The SDK wasn't released until early/mid 2008 and the app store didn't publicly open until July/August 2008. In the beginning there were just a hand full of useful apps and a whole lot of crap. It's still a whole lot of crap, but just like McDonalds - Apple is proud to say "Billions Served". This is the biggest impediment to any company attempting to compete with Apple; People are going to look at any initial app store and say "But Apple has 25,000 applications and you have 18".
Let's see what happens after Palm releases their SDK beyond the scope of their trusted partners. I'm already pretty happy with what I've seen so far. The WebOS is solid in concept and execution. The phone's just as easy to use as an iPhone and in some cases better. It's a more solid initial release than I remember the iPhone being and indeed the PHONE part works much better than I remember the first releases of the iPhone working.
1. Which phone offers seamless multitasking: win for the Pre
2. Which phone doesnt slow down and is fast and resposnive.
Both phones are pretty good in this area. The Pre is very responsive but since you can mulittask with the Pre I notice it slows down a bit if you are running a lot of apps and doing several things at the same time. If Apple adds multitasking to the Iphone and its fast and responsive even with lot of apps open dong several things at once it I would prefer it over the Pre.
3. Physical keyboard.
Pre obviously has the advantage here, but the keys are so tiny is it useful? If the touchscreen is super responsive it may not make a difference.
4. Choice of providers. I think its pretty obvious people are angry about the tied to one provider thing. Whoever opens their phone up to more providers is more attractive to me.
If you have to get a 10 minute tutorial on how to use the phone I wouldn't call it easy to use. In the case of iPhone even a three year old can pick it up and start using it without any training. That's testament to the ease of iPhone UI.
And what's with people calling the iPhone revolutionary or redefining the marketplace? What's "new" about the iPhone? What did Apple invent? PDA? No. Cellphone? No. Touchscreen? No. App Store? No. MP3 Player? No. Handheld GPS? No. Handheld web broswer? No. -- Seriously, what's unique about the iPhone other than the typical Fischer-Price interface for the technologically challenged?
It's not an either/or situation, it's a preference. Frankly, having lived with both, the Pre is WAY easier to deal with than the iphone if you want to actually DO anything. But it isn't as solidly built as the iPhone. But the Pre has the keyboard, and everyone can complain about it not being perfect, but at the end of the day, there is a ton of users for whom virtual keyboards are less than optimal and will want a hardware keyboard.
It' s a beautiful device, even out of context of the iPhone. This goofy mentality of "iPhone is best" or "Pre is best" is a waste of time. They are both awesome devices. For me, the Pre works great. For my significant other, it's all about the iPhone. For others who only care about email on the go, any Blackberry device is more than sufficient. I think Palm has done something remarkable here, and I'm happy that they have made the marketplace for PDAs more competitive. The Storm was a waste of time and resources, and Blackberry is clearly now falling behind the times. Good for Palm and Apple; I assume Blackberry will pay attention.
it's evolutionary , infact Web O.S looks like it was developed by Apple
it's not a copy but is designed in a Apple like fashion { must be the ex-Apple employees}
but having said that there are things that the pre has that no other phone comes close to
Like the Desktop class Multi-tasking abilioties, un-obtrusive notifications, universal search etc.
it even backups all the phone data every hour onto the cloud { how awesome is that}
So while the pre is more evolutionary it has surpassed the iPhone in many areas
even though Palm's app store is a joke right now , I can see it improving within a few months
plus remember all the apps can run in the background
Why not open 10 apps in multi-tasking and see how long the battery lasts.
Yes because nothing sucks like having to quit a game so that you check for incoming email. /snark
I bet its tiring to copy and paste all your material and then post---a feature that the Pre has and the iPhone DOESNT. You should get a 'dumb' feature phone-you are that kind of user.
Ill say it again......
'Maybe you should refresh your memory and remember that Palm came out with most of the iPhone's 'precious little features' you describe YEARS ago.....(ie TOUCHSCREEN, 30,000+ available applications, INCLUDING MRI images, dictionaries, emulators for gaming, etc.)
AND maybe you should ALSO remember that this is Pre 1.0---did iPhone have 30,000 app with their first iPhone-i dont think so. Reality check for you and many other readers. Stop force feeding bs to the masses and fact check yourself before writing incredibly numbing and factless statements.
Lets also say that for the record, I use and have used all OS's including--RIM, Symbian, Winmo, Palm OS, Android and now WebOS. Palm has released a product with an operating system that keeps them in the game.
Move over Apple---there is a giant market and Palm is ready to take it back with WebOS and its GROWING app catalog.
I also noticed some lag on certain apps and a few connect issues/crashes...but I'm sitting here watch TV (using Sprint TV that is included on our Sprint family plan) on my Pre...which is cool and much more enjoyable then just playing solitaire on an iPhone.
iPhone's have bunches of app options and that would be nice on my new Pre...but they'll come with time and I'm happy with what we are presently being offered.
Major benefit relate to:
1. Multitasking...Apple iPhone's really need this, but I don't expect it in 3.0 or anytime soon...iPhone OS is just too bloated and Apple like to be efficient on a phone. I hope Apple can fix this, especially when they move to another phone provider
2. Phone Service - Sprint Rocks and available every in my area. ATT is sporadic at best and doesn't even work in some building that should receive 3G service. I dislike going outside to make a call and have know clue why ATT customers put up with it???
3. Synergy - remote email and calendar management Gmail (regular and Google Apps work perfectly) and other imap/exchange accounts you need access too. Love being able to load all my mail away from the office and in the AM while drinking coffee and just sliding the SPAM and garbage to the trash by flipping them off screen to the right. Synergy could use some improvements like Facebook sync options to remove users from the list you don't normally contact, but I still like the fact that it auto downloads friend's profiles and updates they make on Facebook (pictures and phone # change automatically)
4. Sprint TV - talk about cool being able to watch TV while in like at the bank. I've had a iPod for years...but never had the option to watch live TV over the internet.
5. Sprint Navigation - is also very useful, but I noticed loosing GPS connection when roaming on other Cell Towers...must be Sprint connection specific??? not sure though...
Major Negatives relate to:
1. Software Options - still not iTunes App Store...looking forward to when developers get cranking...
2. Games - very limited...nothing to keep me busy when waiting at the doctors office.
3. Software problems - Synergy Problems (facebook, account management, etc)
the Web O.S has seriously impressed me
Multi-tasking for one has been available on phones for years
but the pre Does it in a desktop style fashion
{plus for the first time ever on a multi-touch device}
add the unified notifications and universal search
and it is definitely the best mobile O.S out there IMO
once the SDK gets released and the App store grows
I'm definitely going pre
thats is unless Apple surprises at WWDC
the only downside to the pre I see right now is the multi-media capabilities
only 8 GB of memory and
the music player App is missing a lot of key functionality
you cant create playlists on the fly
podcasts and music are clubbed together for some odd reason
and it cant even seek music ! wat the hell palm ?
- by Masterface7 June 7, 2009 6:20 AM PDT
- Lets not even talk about that if you are a loyal sprint customer who has been with them for any amount of time longer than about a year and you are on a Fair and Flexible plan then you get turned away unless you wanna pay double the price of you plan for the same number of minutes and the same amount of Internet.
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- by Tim_Liao June 7, 2009 9:48 AM PDT
- Though if you are like me who has been with Sprint for 10 years or if you have had one of their voice with data plans ($69) for three consecutive months. The last one is easy - three consecutive months at $69 and they will upgrade you to Sprint Premiere which then entitles you to many perks including the best perk being the one which let's you have a full $150 rebate on a new phone every year, not every two years. Also being a Sprint Premier member, you NEVER pay the $18 upgrade fee. You hear me, never the $18 upgrade fee. If we charged the $18 upgrade fee yesterday and your a Sprint Premiere member, go and get your $18 back. Being a Sprint Premiere member rocks and all it takes is 3 consecutive months of having a $69 plan and more.
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