The Channel Wire

June 09, 2009

Palm Pre has arrived -- and units were here and gone before most folks knew it. No, Sprint and Palm aren't waving the white flag over Palm Pre's lack of success as a new entry in the smartphone wars. Quite the opposite: Palm Pre, according to initial estimates from a wide range of news and analyst sources, sold somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 units over the weekend since it went on sale Saturday.

Sprint has wasted no time calling the big sales a victory -- and you have to give Sprint a pat on the back, seeing as the company did set a sales record. Sprint confirmed as much in a late Monday press release, even if it didn't provide any hard numbers for sales and left speculation to handheld-hungry analysts.

"Sprint is a very different company than it was 12 months ago," said Sprint President and CEO Dan Hesse in a statement. "Palm Pre is the coming-out party for the new Sprint. It is the perfect device that highlights all of the positive changes in our company, including our revolutionary Ready Now retail store experience, greatly improved customer care, unmatched value pricing plans and America's most dependable 3G network."

To Sprint's credit, it has made some good moves. Probably suspecting that Apple would be unveiling a newer, sleeker iPhone -- and Apple did, Monday, at its World Wide Developers Conference -- Sprint has spent a number of ad dollars so far on print and TV advertising that focus on differentiating Palm Pre from Apple's baby.

Sprint ads have touted Palm Pre's ability to switch between open applications and multiple Web sites, playing up its ability to "multi-task," with Tracy Palmer, director of advertising at Sprint, telling The Wall Street Journal that that ability was one of "multiple differentiations" between the two phones. Sprint also used its victory lap press release Monday to again suggest how Sprint's Simply Everything saves more than $1,200 for customers over a two-year period compared to AT&T's iPhone plans, as well as Verizon's smartphone and PDA pricing.

But the shortage of phones overall at Palm Pre's launch -- by most accounts, supplies were severely limited at most Sprint locales and by Monday were out of stock -- can't be seen as anything but a missed opportunity for Sprint.

Sure, it broke its own sales records and did manage the type of buzz and media blitz usually reserved for new offerings from Apple, Research In Motion and other, more established smartphone titans. Reviews from the tech press have been mostly positive.

But with Apple having stolen back the limelight with its long-awaited WWDC announcements, that buzz is gone -- and if there are no Palm Pres to sell to revive that buzz, how much longer can Sprint really call Palm Pre's solid opening weekend a victory?