Building upon earlier news and reports that the Palm Pre was going to suffer massive shortages from the get go, BG has pulled some more info from more of his trusty ninjas that paint an even darker and gloomier image for Palms future. An image that has been riddled with several “last ditch efforts” in order to keep itself from being sucked into the bottomless chasm that is Microsoft, Android, Apple, and RIM. The latest news revolves around Best Buy in particular and how the shortage strangled sales will go. IT isn’t pretty and isn’t for the faint of heart. Come inside if you really must know the dirty details and eternal sadness that is about to become.
Best Buy as detailed by the BG Ninjas will sadly rollout the Pre in a “two-pronged” launch. The first prong will consist of all of the days, hours, minutes, and seconds within the June-July time frame. During this time frame, advertising and marketing of the Pre will be extremely low key and quiet at Best Buy stores in order to try and hide the fact that stock will be non-existent for up to several weeks without replenishment. (Great sales strategy Palm). Furthermore, stores are instructed to not sell the Pre early, are forbidden from making hold lists prior do judgement day, and the worst of all (for BBYM employees anyway), no BBYM employee Pre purchases until August. I guess you “Dad” wants a new Pre for Fathers Day…..*wink wink*. Comically, a ticket system will be used to keep track lines and of all 4 Pre’s available on launch day. Upon selling out, customers will be put on a wait list where they may have the chance of picking up a Pre if the stock ever gets replenished or they simply get pissed and buy another phone.
To make matters even worse, because of the “low” inventory, only 300 selected stores of whom have the highest Sprint sales as well as the most new handset sales will get live demo units. While the remaining Best Buy stores will receive their miniscule allotment of Pre’s, they will not receive a workign demo. This is a terrible idea regardless of stock. I will never purchase a phone that I can’t test drive in-store before hand. Why waste time, money, and gas driving back and forth to return a phone a few days later that I didn’t like? I would much rather spend 10-20 minutes in-store playing around with it and seeing if I really want to take the plunge. Not to mention, a brand new device, hardware and software that is totally new to everyone not being readily available to the masses is a terrible decision that will cost Palm sales. If someone has never had experience with or been exposed to a device that is completely new, they’re going to want to touch and feel it and make sure it is something that they want before taking it home. Palm is now ensuring (at least for the first few months) that only the people who live in bigger cities with stores who have deeper pockets get workign models to sell. It’s almost as if they’re giving the leaders even more of a lead. Doesn’t it?
Prong 2 will come sometime later this year when shippments and supply are claimed to be more readily available. Until then, getting Pre is going to involve either a lot of driving, a lot of standing, or a lot of both.
I personally see the Pre as rushed to market to meet a particular date just to pull a fast one on Apple. If Palm needed more time, why didn’t they simply postpone the launch a month or two. Granted delays are never good for business, but neiter is rushing a product to market. Case in point: Blackberry Storm. While the Storm may or may not have been rushed to market, it certainly wasn’t finished on launch day. Hopefully the hardware and software is sound so that Palm doesn’t have another Storm on their hands. That coupled with the outright suck that has been the highlight of their company for the last few years definitely won’t help matters. Trying to beat Apple to market like this is a bad plan that could have dire consequences if it backfires. Then of course there is this whole “shortage” to deal with and the fact that it won’t make them money. I’m going to give Palm an extreme benefit of the doubt and for a second, one tiny second, believe that this shortage is an actual real shortage and not some fake PR crap to drum up interest because they couldn’t afford real advertising and ask them why then they aren’t waiting another month until they have more stock?
Look at Apple. While you see iPhones everywhere now, that doesn’t change the fact that Apple made a killing and is still making a killing at the bank with a lower priced readily available phone. Not to mention, they will continue to slaughter the bank with the next iPhone regardless of the Pre’s success. Now look at handset makers such as Nokia, particularly their higher end handsets. For this example, lets reduce Nokia to just one model, an N96/97. Pick one to be Nokia’s sole device. Both of those phones new and unsubsidized are north of $600 and are hard to come by. How much money has Nokia made on just one of those devices alone? I garuntee it is no where near as much as they could make if they got carrier support and subsidized prices as well as produced the hell out of those things. Doing so would have greatly increased their “high quality” presence in the market. I say “high quality” because Nokia is still a leader in terms of bulk devices sold. However, a majority of those handsets are very low end not-worth-a-geeks-time devices. Real smartphones and devices that we lust over such as the N96/97, iPhone, latest Blackberry, Android devices, and Palm Pre are all higher dollar, lower production nubmer feature packed items. I can’t help but feel that Palm is trying to kill the Pre’s potential success by falsly believing limiting customer access to the Pre as well as valuable hands on time with the deivce. Angering customers by shorting them what they really want when they really want it will again cause many people to look elsewhere for their next mobile device – something Palm and Sprint cannot afford.
On average, I know within 10 seconds if I like a gadget or electronic device. In regards to a smartphone, within the the following 45-60 seconds and after drilling down into the OS and GUI I can say for sure if I would buy the device or move on to the next. Palm will sadly be ignoring a lot of potential early buyers without live demos at every location that has Pre’s for sale…or at least a sign of a Pre that used to be there or at some point unknown point in the future will be coming to the store. It just doesn’t seem like good business tactics, sense, know-how, call it what you want.
I’ve gone on long enough. What are you feelings on the whole Palm Pre drama? Do you believe the only reason Palm is releasing the Pre on this date is to try and beat Apple and win over some original iPhone users who are nearing the end of their contracts? Or, do you believe that this whole shortage is a big scam, an in-house plan to create hype and drama where there might not be any? Are you planning on buying a Pre launch day? If so will you be going to an actual Sprint store? Or will you brave the vacant lands of Best Buy?
Source: BG, Image Source
