Palm Pre has a date: June 6; Price: $199.99; A 'crossover' device?
Sprint Nextel and Palm have made it official: The Pre is landing June 6.
The highly anticipated phone will be available in Sprint Stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack and a few Wal-Marts for $199.99 with a two year contract. That price includes a $100 rebate, according to a Sprint statement and Palm blog post.
In a research note, JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster said that Palm had to go with the $199 price for the Pre. He also expects a Pre launch that slowly builds because Palm's balance sheet doesn't support an aggressive launch. Coster wrote:
The $199 price point was absolutely necessary, in our view, to go head to head with RIM and Apple. We believe PALM will execute a "soft launch," meaning that it will ramp slowly. The balance sheet does not support a very aggressive ramp. We believe less than 500K units will ship in the first month, and there could be reports of stock outs (adding to the buzz).
Rumors had been circulating that the Pre's launch date would come just before the June 8-12 Apple WWDC conference, which will tout the iPhone 3.0 software. As noted by Andrew Nusca, it will be quite the summer for smartphones.
The Palm home page says it all:
To say there is a lot riding on the Pre launch would be an understatement. For Palm, the Pre represents the future of the company. Palm has been burning cash as it waits for the Pre to launch. Meanwhile, the Pre represents the platform for Palm's future. Pre's Web OS is software future Palm devices will be built on.
Also see: Clash of the Touch Titans; iPhone 3G 3.0 vs. Palm Pre
Image Gallery: Palm Pre device running Palm Web OS
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For Sprint, the carrier is hoping the Pre is its equivalent of the iPhone, an exclusive device that breeds loyal customers that stay with the carrier. Sprint has the second highest churn rate among major carriers, just behind T-Mobile.
As noted in a Forrester report, Pre is staking out a middle ground between utility and entertainment. Sprint's statement didn't discount that notion. The carrier pitched the Pre as being a consolidation device---one smartphone that can do it all. Sprint also called the Pre a "crossover" device.
For those who juggle life circa 2009 – bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard.
The well-known Pre features being touted include:
- Palm's activity cards approach to organizing tasks;
- The ability to organize data and conversations;
- Combined messaging;
- And universal search.