iPhone rival Palm Pre to sell for $199 after rebate on June 6th - Page 4

b/c Palm was once the market leader and fell from grace due to their own ineptness. Apple fell behind MSFT in market share b/c of a different business model (and some questionable business practices on microsoft's part, as well). In other words, Palm deserves their underdog status.

I think the Pre's biggest problem currently has nothing to do with it's capabilities.

I think its biggest problem is marketing. I haven't heard anything about this phone anywhere outside of tech blogs. When the iPhone was coming out it was on the news, in the papers, in magazines, people were lining up in front of AT&T stores to buy it. It also had a ton of TV ads describing how useful the phone was (and I don't even watch much TV).

If they are going to compete with the iPhone they are really going to have to figure out a better way to market the Pre. The $100 rebate isn't going to help either. People hate mail in rebates.

LOL at webOS being a feature.

AT&T could and should offered the iPhone for "free" with a two year contract, but that would upset the makers of competing brands.

sorry istink, but plenty of sprint and Pre executives have been touting the Pre as an iPhone killer. They are asking to have their phone held up against the iPhone in every respect. If/when it falls short, they'll have some explaining to do.

lol it was just a smart Alic answer

I suppose it I HAD to bring real reasoning as to why WebOS is a feature no phone has, it would be the html5 and css3 support.

What gave you this notion other than to say a comment right now that makes anyone wanting a pre feel like a dumb dumb silly willy?

Nobody said the pre has every feature the iphone lacks. The pre is a phone. Stop thinking of it as the "answer to the iphone." It's just another piece in the inevitable evolution of technology.

And at least they said it will get it eventually. Kind of ironic that you would bash the pre for this method when the iphone is finally getting COPY AND PASTE from an update.

(edited for potty mouth)

To be fair Apple screwed themselves up pretty good as well. You can't blame all their bone headed decisions on Microsoft. Apple could easily have been in a better position to compete with MS if they hadn't been so arrogant and stupid.

Regardless Palm doesn't deserve the same regard because they haven't earned it. Apple earned it by revolutionizing their entire business and bringing it back from the dead. Palm appears to have one good product that hasn't even launched yet. It will take more than that.

I had Palmphones for years, starting with the first color models around, the Samsung i300 and i330, then the Treo 700p, so I'm not hoping that Palm will drown. I still use my Treo for some non phone functions, and have it right here on my desk.

But a lot of what I'm reading so far is just speculation about how well this will work. It's ver 1 hardware, and a ver 1 OS.

Palm has some time to get this selling enough, and hopefully, work out the bugs. I hope it will keep them afloat. But we shouldn't be under any illusions. This is an absolute requirement for them. If it doesn't do at least fairly well, and quickly, they're gone. Elevation Partners won't keep throwing money down the hole if it doesn't look as though they will get a positive return for once.

They may not get a year if it doesn't sell well enough, something that's not guaranteed. Even though sales will likely look good at first, it's got to sustain itself over the next 6 months at least. If sales tail off too quickly, and they will tail off after the first "must have" buyers get it, they may not have time left to introduce in on Verizon, who may not even want it then if it looks as though it's not doing well.

I'm really skeptical about this rebate. Sprint hasn't been good about rebates, and even though our milage will vary as they say, Sprint customer service isn't known for it's quality. As I say, I was with them for years.

If AT&T decided to do an iPhone Ad mentioning that the 8 GB iPhone cost $199 without a rebate as opposed to one for the Pre from Sprint, that could hurt the chance of the Pre. Many people are rightly skeptical about rebates of any kind these days.

If Apple comes out with new phones this summer, as expected, with double the memory for the same money, both Palm and Sprint will have a major problem.

You mention that the price will come down after a while, and normally, I'd say that is sounded about right. But it may have to drop 50% in the mid summer. That would kill any change of getting a profit from it for Palm, and possibly from Sprint as well.

I think this is really bad timing. The Pre should have been out for at least a couple of months already so as to not have to knock at the iPhone's door in June. A lot of people who might consider the Pre will wait instead to see what a new iPhone will be with its new OS upgrade. This could sharply cut into the Pre's first sales, which wouldn't have happened a couple of months ago.

I'm talking about 3G as well. It wasn't so hot.

I'm very familiar with Sprint's rebate policies, as you can tell from my post.

I don't trust them. They don't have a good history with them.

Almost everybody seems absolutely sure that physical keyboard is a big advantage. I doubt it, at least for my needs. If the Pre does not have an on-screen keyboard this sucks. The advantages of on-screen keyboard:

Take a look at this first! Note that the iPhone keyboard is compared against a relatively large netbook keyboard.

1. LOCALIZABLE. Will Palm make a german keyboard for the German market? Or Russian for the Russian market? Also, you can switch between several keyboards.
2. Context-sensitive. It has customizable appearance depending on the contexts.
3. You can move to the next key if needed. Some folks are really good at that. Check out the link above.
4. Easy way to type accented characters.
5. Touch areas are adaptive (not equal for all letters), more chances to click the right key.
6. It has portrait and landscape mode.

Let's wait for the reviews to see how the users will like the keyboard in real life!

To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price. None is true. My prediction: the Pre will not affect the iPhone sales in a measurable way. The best Palm can hope for is to save the company, but that's going to be a challenge.

Its not a feature of the OS, as it is the OS, but it is a feature of the device. Mac and iPhone users use Mac OS X as a legitimate reason to buy their HW, so it should hold in this case, too.

The only issue I have with iStinks comment is that we dont know how well WebOS will fair at this point, but its been in development since 1999, its use of open web technologies it would appear to be very lightweight compared to other mobile OSes, most of which are more antiquated, and its development platform is more easy to code for. These are all features that could make it a winner for Palm and Sprint, but well need to see some independent testing to be sure.

That sucks man. I've only had to do it twice. First time was a little long, but the second time took about 3 weeks. I guess I got lucky.

I'm not saying that having no replaceable battery is the best thing always, though it does offer advantages as well. But you were talking about "crying out" for one.

That's a heck of a bit different than a mention that it doesn't have one, and that it might make a difference for some people.

And the iPhone gets, by far, the best satisfaction numbers even without that replaceable battery. Most people don't need it at all. And there are other ways of getting a field recharge if needed.

And where are the "it won't do gaming and has no APIs for graphics and animation" whiners?
iPhone OS blows this out of the water, but because its non-apple, its the second coming.
For Christ's sake, its dev environment is nothing but Hypercard on a touch screen.
gimme a break.

And Apple fixed that problem.

What does that have to do with what is happening NOW?

Good points about the onscreen keyboard advantages. I can't believe it never occurred to me the iphone probably didn't come with one because of how it was released world wide and different keyboards for different languages would be an issue.

I have a phone with the slide out keyboard, and I honestly don't use it as much as I thought. The on screen keyboard in portrait mode works pretty good, and switching from different types of keyboards is nice too. But when it comes to writing email, or responding to a thread, I always use the physical keyboard. It's just so much nicer.

Having both seems perfect to me.

That's a very ill-informed, and pointless, statement. The first cellphone cost thousands of dollars. But you wouldn't price it at that if you were introducing a competitive product today.

Oh balogna. Apple spent a decade releasing utter crap and failing to do any serious development work.

Instead of striking out on their own, like they did with the Mac, they simply listened to what the pundits were saying and did that. Pundits said CORBA was the next big thing? Let's do SOM. Email? PowerTalk. 3D? RAVE. Database access? DAL and DAM. Typesetting? QDGX. All of these products sucked, because they (sometimes) didn't really understand them and (more commonly) didn't have the resources to make them complete.

Meanwhile all of this was being built on a single-user single-tasking OS that couldn't hope to do them justice. And every time they chased one of these "next big things" (which promptly disappeared) that was another minute they spent not working on the core OS. So by 1996 the OS is utterly hopeless, and Apple has a whole portfolio of garbage no one wanted in the first place. Geez, X.400 servers?!

What Palm lacked was direction, exactly what Apple was laking. What they still lack is "on their own". Lets face it, every single mention of the Pre has a mention of the iPhone.

That's a great summarization of the Pre's dilemma (and that of every new smartphone). When you factor in the iPod Touch, the iPhone / iPod Touch combo could become the defacto smartphone much like the iPod is the defacto mp3 player. All other manufacturers will fight and quibble over the remaining market share. RIM is really the only hurdle to overcome before this becomes reality. With third-party attachments supported via bluetooth and the dock connector in the new iphone OS, we're gonna see an unbelievable burst of innovation which will make the iTouch/iPhone environment extraordinarily compelling.

I am actually more interested in the other future devices that will use WebOS. I hope the Pre is successful.
Perhaps then Apple will be forced to come out with a better product. I know Apple has something better but they are delaying their release of it because of their stubborness. And I'm not referring to new hardware either. I'm talking about the Apple mobile OS and its refusal to become a full multi-tasker.

But, lets see what happens in June.

The only phones we know that will run the WebOS are Palm's phones. no other deal has been announced, and Palm didn't, as far as I know, say that they will license the OS to anyone else.

Do you have information otherwise?

I think the fact is that the vast majority of people don't need a user replaceable battery. So as a compromise Apple can design lighter slimmer products with less complexity. Good for users(most) and good for them from a manufacturing perspective.

I would complain about the cost of having the battery replaced but you are really only paying about $10 extra for Apple to install it.

Bingo. And, new software too. They'll just get iPodded like PMP-makers did. I'll bet Apple already has this figured out as a part of their hardware/software strategy for the year.

On top of that, Pre had also better make sure that they have no major IP violations: Apple has promised to pursue that end of things aggressively.

It's amusing that 3G here in Toronto absolutely rocks. I have to drive a LONG way before I drop to Edge, and I get solid speed throughout.

Very funny Sol, I'm sure you're quick enough to understand the comments. Or at least I used to.

YOU tell me!
ASK those bitching about Pre's $199 cost after rebate- not me.
This cost for the 1st gen Pre seems reasonable to me considering all of Palm R&D costs , etc.

Hmm, I guess I'm misinformed. I must have read it as hearsay along the lines and remembered it as fact.

Indeed. The last point is possible, and I hope they do it.

Maury

Red Koolaid or orange today? But then you probably shelled out the $600 2 years ago too and never blinked twice.

HOw is that?
What CDMA peple who are happy with their service would want to switch to AT&T's lousy 3G network-Yechh!
The fanboyz have already switched - lightning will be very hard to strike 3 times. Many of the sales will be renewals only.

He makes a valid point. Palm can't come to market today with a $600 Pre and expect it to sell. IF they had come out with it two years ago before the iPhone? Maybe.

People wouldn't pay $600 for an iPhone today because they know they don't have to pay that much. Comparing this to two years ago just doesn't make sense because market conditions have changed.

That's not the problem. Apple was releasing into a vacuum, a market dominated by utterly useless "smart" phones that were difficult to use, had absolutely useless browsers and didn't sync up anything you actually wanted. Don't get me wrong, the BB is a superb business tool (better than the iPhone even today) but there wasn't a single consumer smart phone out there worth buying. Period.

That is no longer true. Apple has wrapped up the majority of the brain-space (forget sales, people talk about everything in relation to the iPhone) and they've set the bar for others to meet. Lets not forget that a year ago everyone was talking about how this new open web-based development environment combined with a real keyboard and better camera was going to kick the iPhone's butt. Pre? No, G1.

The point is that they can't be "good enough". They have to be way better, on EVERY measure. And they're not. This pricing issue is just the insult to the injury, IMHO. It doesn't make a difference how much it cost to develop, they need to compete with iPhone, not a vacuum. If they're going to lose money at the iPhone price point, well, that's pretty much that.

Maury

My point is that a $200 Pre after rebate is not a bad deal, in fact it's excellent, for a brand new phone with this technology. The iPhone when originally introduced was overpriced- plain and simple. Hence the $200 reduction 2 months later with a $100 rebate for Apple products only. I know it brings up old wounds but that original pricing was BULL$HIT and indefensible.

That's why I'd wait the two days and find out for sure...

Or you can just buy the Pre and return it if iPhone 2009 changes the game.

what R&D costs are you talking about? Paying for iPhone engineers to jump ship to Palm?

No I did not. (Blinked twice, I mean). And, had positive consumer surplus, on top of a substantially enriched stock portfolio from my Apple stock (resulting from the market impact of iPhone's introduction).

Doesn't get better than that. So, go stew in it.

"Using the device's multi-touch-like screen surface"

I thought the Palm was multi-touch. Is it not?

"am curious how this works. So what, if product X offers a rebate, Best Buy simply pays you it up front?

If so, my guess is that this won't be coming to Best Buy any time soon, unless they have an air-tight deal worked out with Sprint. I know that I, for one, would not be terribly interested in paying out more than my profits in an up-front rebate and then waiting for a 3rd party to pay be back some time in the future. I like the cash in MY bank account, thank you."

Best Buy has always done that. Best Buy pays the vendor (Sprint) the 300. You pay 200 and Sprint will return the 100 to best buy. It is how they always have done it. In november when they stared this they had a 2.4 percent market share in phones, now they have a 8.6. It's a good deal!