Some early estimates are in on how the Palm Pre did its launch weekend. J.P. Morgan puts sales at more than 50,000, other analysts go as high as 100,000. Everyone is trying to spin this as a success because Sprint stores “sold out” of their inventory. Investors aren’t buying the story. Shares of Palm are down 10 percent, as of this writing.
The opening weekend Palm Pre inventory was too low to begin with—either because of manufacturing constraints, Palm’s own financial constraints, or by design. It’s always good PR to be able to say you sold out. But if Palm seriously wants to go up against the iPhone it is going to have to do a lot better. When the first-generation iPhone launched two years ago, in comparison, Apple sold 146,000 units its first weekend. By the time Apple came out with its second iPhone 3G last year, it sold one million units the first weekend.
Apple has been prepping the market for the past two years, spending millions on convincing everyone that they need a Web phone. Palm and others should be able to tap into all of that good feeling during this Summer of Smartphone Love. If Palm and Sprint don’t get their act together, there won’t be much love left for them. If the experience described by iJustine in the video below is any indication (she couldn’t even find a working Palm Pre at either Best Buy or a Sprint store to try out before buying), the low-inventory excuse is already wearing thin with consumers.
Lets put it this way. I was at the Best Buy in Sunnyvale at 3pm in the afternoon on Launch Day and here’s what I saw:
- Palm Pre unit not on display (fake unit on display). I had to ask the rep to take it out from under the counter to play with.
- Nobody around inquiring about it. I was the only one there who even asked to see it. I had expected there to be a line of people wanting to look at it.
- Two live iPhone units on display.
The upside, they sold out of their Pre allocation an hour after it was on sale.
oh………….. poor boy
Umm why? I wasn’t there to buy it. Kinda funny I didn’t see iJustine’s video before commenting but she had the exact same experience.
And BTW, was that scary voice really hers or did she use some voice morpher to do it? Totally messed up.
Yeah.. Palm cant live on hype, they should prove it by quarter sales. Old timers will like mechanical keyboard
So they probably won’t advertise it as much because they will sell out anyways because of the low stock. And as you say, they did sell out immediately after launch.
1) Beside the iphone what other phone at Best Buy do you see thats not a plastic unit. Apple makes Best Buy put real iphones up and no other phones are because they get broken so fast. I mean you look the MP3 players and laptops at best buy and a lot of them are broken because people have no respect for a product that isn’t theirs. So don’t complain about Best Buy not having a working Pre.
2) ijustine would say anything to make anything other than Apple look good. She’s the apidamy of fanboy (or fangirl in her case), sure she’s hot but anything non-Apple she seems to hate. If the Pre was the next iphone she and the other Apple fanpeople would have praised it and kissed it but since its not it sucks. It doesn’t matter that the iphone after 2 years FINALLY got cut and past and video both of which a lot of smart phones already had. Sure the Pre doesn’t have video BUT its only a bios and software upgrade to make it work. All the Apple fanpeople are going to have to buy ALL NEW ipones to get that or they’re stuck without video and alot of the other addons 3.0 will bring. It also shows how truly crazy Apple fanpeople are. AT&T is the worse natwork in the US next to T-Mobile and still they flock to the iphone, then they complain that they get dropped calls and half the things that the iphone will do in other countries it won’t do in the US because of AT&T, but its an Apple product so we’ll buy it.
Sprint, their network is pretty much on par with Verizons and I think they’re EVDO network is faster. All AT&T can say is they have the biggest network in the world, which may be true (even though they don’t own the GSM sites they just lease them, so other countries GSM network isn’t theirs but they can run on it). But in the US it sucks and why because people here are willing to settle for what they have here. You think Europe would settle for what AT&T is doing? Hell no, AT&T would be a dead company anywhere but in the US and we wonder why Asia and Europe gets better phones than we do and its true with the iphone too because they’ll be able to do more than the US iphones can because we settle.
Apple and AT&T deserve each other. The iphone isn’t with any other company because Apple wanted to many demands. Verizon likes to put they’re own software and stuff on their phones and Apple probably said no. T-Mobile and Sprint have their own things going on to worry about the iphone, BUT both Verizon and AT&T want the Pre. It may not be a hit with Sprint, but as soon as it goes to either AT&T (which it’ll be crappy because of AT&T), or Verizon its going to open Apples eyes. By then the Pre will probably be more mature, with a few updates. It’ll have video, better battery life, and hopefully at ton of apps then Apple will have a real competitor. Still there is Android which is going to grow and be better and I think Windows Mobile 7 is going to be a major upgrade like Windows 7 is to Vista, then there is Blackberry which is huge and Symbian which will hopefully get more phones in the US. In the coming months, year, years, we’re going to see a change and if Apple is going to have to keep up.
Not true. I have a Dell and I *had* all intentions of buying the Pre that day. Still do.. well, maybe.
ur hot. and thank you
Oh, I love the lady expression. cannot have enough of it.
wow, really love the lady expression. Very clean and nice teeth though.
50k is still pretty good by most standards. We won’t know the full effect for a couple weeks.
Compared to what… Because Compared to the iPhone that would be considered an Epic Fail..
This is sick of Palm Pre…. Really to have only 100,000 for the launch! I have even heard few Best buy stores had just couple of Palm Pre phones to sell! Bullsh*t!
Who uses the Palm OS these days? Looks like a nice phone, but I think it’s the last rodeo for Palm.
Nobody uses it. The Palm Pre runs Linux.
Why are you bent over backwards against Palm EricK?
Coz they haven’t got one for free….
to keep all the mac fanboys who read his blog happy
a thing called website traffic
It’s really not that surprising that the stock is pulling back some. Expectations were exceedingly high for quite some time – and stocks trade on expectations – at least in the short-term.
In fact, even with today’s decline, the stock price has increased over 275% percent since Jan 1, 2009. Not all that bad.
I agree completely. You can hardly say the market doesn’t like the Pre. All things considered, this is a fairly small adjustment.
I am sorry but the Pre-Love is coming from all the apple haters(95%) the rest are from Gadget freaks…The phone is O.K but nothing to get excited about.
Palm’s stock sell off is a classic “sell on the news” event.
Ask any trader and they’ll tell you the worst time to buy a stock in this condition — rallies 700% in 6 months — is when a big product or much anticipated news is released. Traders bid up the price in anticipation and dump it when the catalyst loses its effect.
Same thing happened with Apple last year when the 2nd version of the iPhone came out.
wow you really know it.. so why don’t you short and kick ass leverage palm.. and you all gonna be gazillionaires.. I mean it is so easy… and you are so sure.. you should take your retirement money and LEVERAGE LEVERAGE LEVERAGE.. and you will be sooooooo rich….
That probably has something to do with it, but it depends on what the news is. If Palm had sold 500,000 Pres instead of 50,000, the stock would be up.
Eric, I would suggest that you be a little careful with the articles relating short-term price movement with recent news.
As a trader I can tell you that most of the time such news is used by the professionals to shake out the weak holders (eg those who thought it would be a great idea to buy the stock a few days ago to cash in on the launch).
If you want to do the analysis of the effect on the launch — you should start from when the rumors began to at least a week after launch. Of course, I still won’t trust such a review as I’m a short-term trader.
No no, this is classic wall street stuff…. price goes down regardless when the actual “event” happens, regardless of how well the actual product does.
Please do not pretend to be some kind of Wall Street analyst. We can’t even trust the **real** Wall Street analysts as it is!!!
Short term stock movements mean nothing — ESPECIALLY when we’re talking about < 10% drop on a relatively small company.
Hey….Jackasses….did anyone remember a little thing called WWDC going on yesterday? You know, a little thing called a new iphone? Stocks went down in anticipation of the announcement. Now that a new and improved iphone has been announced, they will stay down until Pre sales figures post-new-iphone-announcement can be obtained.
I swear, it is morons like you who have gotten this contry to where we are today. Stop trying to be jailhouse brokers and go back to pretending you know how to do something else.
iJustine? Really? Lame, you couldn’t find a bigger apple fangirl to save your life.
I for one enjoyed a 5 minute clip of a rather cute girl. And apple fangirl or not, she does have a point.
I watched until she clumsily mashed her thumb into the keyboard for 2.5 seconds before categorically declaring that it “sucked”.
Plus what does this have to do with Palm’s stock price? Guess the news itself didn’t come off as anti-Palm enough, so they had to throw in some unwarranted, unrelated bashing.
well… but look at it tho, her fingers are not that big and yet it’s much too big to press those buttons… the Pre fails compared to the Blackberry cos it’s too narrow, it’s like an attempt to steal from both apple and blackberry and ends up with neither
I agree… iJustine is annoying on many levels
Amen.
I bet you are too.
What a fabulous video from iJustine! As Apple has their own stores, they have a little more control of the user experience than Palm does – that was obvious in the launches! Also the SF & Palo Alto Apple stores are far better than many of the others in the country in terms of the helpfulness and knowledge of the employees. Go to other parts of the country and that isn’t always the case.
This WSJ article points out that AAPL’s stock did the same thing with their iPhone launches: climb before the launch only to drop afterwards.
http://online.w...oo#mod=yahoo_hs
According to you that mean’s that investors thought the iPhone launches were a failure, too. I don’t think so.
I was just going to comment on how common over-speculation was leading up to an anticipated event. And, that this drop off phenomenon is actually pretty common, and can be likened to what happens after many mergers, stock splits, etc. Regardless, I think Erick is really over simplifying things when he says that investors don’t think the launch was a success.
Good point
The tech/bloggers/media are sugar coating this failure. You can read “success” all over the net. The estimated sales numbers was terrible. Not even close to first generation iPhone weekend sales. Forget comparing it to 3G sales…
give it time people!
Agreed. Pass the time talking to an iPhone app.
erm, it’s palm, they don’t have time like apple and rim.
Im tempted to buy one in retribution for the most annoying video Ive seen so far.
LOL I thought I was the only one.
Agreed, I couldn’t even make it through the whole video. Completely annoying.
Erick – she’s horrid.
erick,
This is stupid. Investors (myself included) always sell when results come in. They never measure to rumor. Check almost all of apples big conventions / releases and you’ll see the stock climb for days beforhand while the hype grows and drop like a rock the day after!
This kind of trading reflects only people playing the market, not hedge funds or institutional investors.
This doesn’t mean anything!
Does this mean apple stock will drop tomorrow?
If that were actually true, everyone would short the day before the result..
They have a good marketing standpoint so far for what they are aiming for I think. Let’s leave them a bit more time and see how the first few months go.
I am sorry but the Pre-hate is coming from all the apple lovers (99,9%). Those who say the phone is O.K but nothing to get excited about have not used one.
its been a common observation that techcrunch has always been skeptical about palm pre compared to engadget which is all gaga over palm pre release … Considering sprint user count even if it is 50,000 users it is a lot. Although I agree Sprint might have done better with PR.
My roommate bought one, and he said the store only had 20 phones in stock. That’s ridiculous.
It was successful in the sense that they sold as many as they were hoping for. Palm and Sprint both admitted that they were not going to sell as much an iPhone on opening day.
Given the low inventory available, Palm probably didn’t think they’d even sell this much.
TechCrunch should probably disclose in this post that Palm promised them a Pre but they never got one. Especially since there is a major focus on Palm’s stock trading price.
I’d be resentful about that too.
Palm had an excellent opportunity over the past 6 months to engage developers and the rest of the community to gauge demand and modify production rates.
Don’t go for the iPhone-killer label, because people are always going to think the comparison comes up short. If they’d focused on building up a great community beforehand, this could have been a totally different launch day, but also a totally different build-up.
1. Getting SDKs to developers earlier would have helped build early-stage apps, and had developers evangelizing the platform well in advance of the release. A directory of upcoming apps (from early-release SDK devs) with “I want this app” voting buttons would have given devs feedback early on, but also given Palm an idea of what people were interested in doing on the phone even before its launch.
2. Sponsoring ‘public user’ days by raffling off trips to Palm’s HQ for ‘average Joe’ testing, complete with videos and such. Total transparency. $10 tickets for a chance to win a tour of the Palm Pre HQ and meet with the team – all proceeds to go to a charity. Free flights and hotels for the winners. Candid feedback on user experience stuff. Blogged/videod/documented.
3. Same experience for devs, based on which pre-release apps had best community feedback earlier on. Palm could have purchased the apps from the dev community as pre-installed apps. Fly top community devs out to meet with Pre team. What would that have done to your development resume and street cred, that one of your apps made it on to the Pre at launch?
Instead, what did we get? Standard CES announcement, then months of nothing, then some web ads, then low inventory, store experiences that are the exact same as every other phone on the market (plastic models that don’t work, unfriendly staff, etc.).
Palm had a chance to really change how phones are developed and launched. They had a huge community of people *wanting* something new, and they blew it.
(07-24-2007) Apple Inc. shares fell as much as 5 percent Tuesday after AT&T said it activated 146,000 iPhones during the first few days of the highly-anticipated product’s launch, far less than Wall Street’s initial sales estimates — http://www.sfga...BUG94R63P76.DTL
Dear Iphone users,
Fear not…Pre users are not going to come to your homes, pee on your iphones, kiss your girlfriend, and give you wedgies. We are not going to make fun of you like they did in school and throw tater tots at you in the lunchroom. You love your iphones. We get it. Please don’t all run out and buy Porsches to prove to us that you are all still virile, despite the release of the Pre.
And please stop trying to compare initial sales to stake your supremecy. The iphone was marketed and hyped like no other. When I went to get my Pre and saw a line of 50 people I was dumbstruck. There was no marketing, no commercials, no hype. The first Pre commercial I saw was yesterday, the day after its release. So, I would hope like hell that the iphone outsold the Pre in its first weekend, given their media blitz.
So please stop all this insecurity. You have the best device….there, does that make you feel better? You want daddy to rub your tummy now too?
Seriously, I’m gonna go play with my Pre.
Sorry, the Pre has been hyped by Palm incessantly since January’s CES. They asked for the comparisons to the iPhone. Directly (by making comparisons themselves and declaring superiority), and indirectly (by launching mere days before the WWDC).
You reap what you sow. Palm asked to be held to an iPhone standard, so that’s what they get. And with the exception of multitasking, they now lose. But personally, I think AT&T just handed Palm the ultimate gift with their upgrade and tethering/MMS shenanigans…a chance. Slim, but…disgruntled customers do funny things. Palm/Sprint should do something dramatic now to capitalize.
But they won’t. And so in 6-12 months, when Verizon finally gets the iPhone (it has to happen), and (so they claim despite Sprint’s denials) the Pre, they’ll claim the spoils.
No, no sweetheart, stop kidding youself. The techie blogs hyped the pre since the CES in january…so only the people who read those blogs knew what the hell a pre was. Most “normal” or average non-techie customers had (and still have) no idea what the hell a pre is.
If you read the bloomberg and WSJ article on the pre sales projections from the weekend, they both mention multiple times about the lack of a marketing campaign.
there were no pre commercials and a few print ads. they hype you refer to was coming from blogs and tech sites excited about the phone.
compare that to the marketing machine of apple and the campaign for the iphone before its release. if you draw the same conclusion as you had above, you are not being honest with yourself.
not her again
I don’t have much to compare 50 or 100k to. The figures quoted in this article are about one other kind of cell phone. How do the numbers stack up against other phones, like the Storm? I don’t know.
And not sure if a company “on the ropes” would want to get slammed by Wall Street for having too much inventory, either. So, what’s a company to do?
I did find iJustine’s experience in Best Buy inexcusable. However, her boatload of attitude was pretty sad, too.
yeah, not a great start, but I’d like to think this is more of a marathon than a sprint (no pun) situation. It’s not over yet I hope.
The market wants a really cool linux phone, right? Google or Palm or someone will nail it eventually…
Awesome phone… Horrible Sprint service…
I’m sorry but Sprint’s coverage sucks! Working in sales I couldn’t afford to use it. Which is why I’m sticking with the iPhone
you gotta be f’n kidding right, not sure if you’ve actually used sprint, but I currently have both sprint and AT&T, and AT&T’s service is by far the worse service ever.. compared to all 4 providers I would never use at&t… if another company had an iphone, I would pay to get off of there service, buy a new iphone, and switch services, just because at&t is so bad.
Not sure where you’re located… but look at the facts.
Sprint: http://coverage...jsp?language=EN
AT&T: http://www.wire...coverageviewer/
btw… I’ve never dropped a call on my iPhone
OK, enough Pre stories. Time to move on to rumors about who will buy Palm. We know it won’t be 3Com this time…
I went to a Sprint store on Saturday in Austin and was able to play with a working model for 30 minutes. I was impressed with the UI and the Camera. The big leap forward is that the OS can run multiple applications at one time. In the store they told me they had 24 apps running at once before it crashed.
They had a line early in the day, it was cleared out within an hour. As for the iJustine video, anyone who knows anything about distribution of new phones, knows that the newest models are almost never at the Big Box stores first. As I recall, when the iPhone came out you had to go to an AT&T store or the Apple Store for months. That was it.
With my time using the Pre, it seemed solid, I really liked the keyboard and the browser was great, every bit as good as the iPhone with a solid feel and a smaller form factor. The big knock is not so many applications right now, but that will change, also no GSM, so it will not work in Europe if that is important to you.
yeah I went to use it on saturday, although i did find it to be a little unresponsive at first, after have to really wipe it down, it worked better. The background apps is awesome. The card system is awesome. But overall the smaller screen was a real downer. Also the charging unit sort of sucks. It might be wireless, but the good thing about the wire is you can still use the unit pretty effectively while charging. The unit I tested needed to be charged, and has to physically touch the charger, so any movement to try to flip it or something would cause it to stop charging, and then have to recharge, and would act flaky while going on and off the charger. but overall good phone
But weren’t the prices of the first iphone $400 and $600, versus 200 for the Pre? That lower price might have been expected to result in higher Pre sales than the first iphone.
yeah – but now the iphone is 99 bucks.. so – the old numbers are kind of irrelevant ppl have options
What is Palm going to do when Apple launches a 4G iPhone for $99 and starts offering it with other carriers like Sprint and Verizon. Apple is going to dominate for sure.
Its all relative people…Whether it is 50k or 100k, its number that is not terribly far off of the 140k that apple sold in Gen1, and this is by a company with 1/1000th of the ad budget. No investor (at least not any smart ones) thought that this is a war that would be won during the first weekend….for a company of Palms size this needs to be a rock solid device that expands reach organically through reviews and word of mouth. They just don’t have the ad budget to blow it out traditionally.
If this device is truly better than the iphone, or right there with it, the device will be a success, it not, the market will dictate that .
It was said above…but I’ll reiterate…unless this was a 250k unit weekend, the stock was sure to drop. There was far too much buzz by weak holders built into the pre-weekend price.
I hope the Palm Pre does well just because I would rather have a competitive market for smart phones where it drives innovation. Early reports indicate that it might not be the case.
As far as the video. Does Best Buy even have working models of other smart phones on the floor? Most of the time when I have been in one they don’t.
Also of course it is going to feel cheap and plastic it is a dummy unit.
As far as the Sprint stop goes… Yeah no criticism there. It is fairly typical for them… That entire company has pretty bad customer service.
She makes me want to punch babies in the neck. Thank god we can watch her with the volume down like 80% of her audience.
First of all, a 2-year contract with a $300 price tag (and $100 rebate)? Too high, and that could be one reason why it didn’t get people very excited. That, and they didn’t make enough really.
Yeah, because the iPhone wasn’t $500 with a new 2-year contract or anything.
Most likely the economy has something to do with it.
does anyone know how many g1’s were sold in the first weekend?
Actually, that is a success. I was expecting Palm to sell 5 of these devices. But they exceeded my expectations.
The whole market is down today so it’s hard to argue that Palm’s stock price drop is all due to Pre sales. Unless you’ve already done the regression analysis on the stock price returns going back a year…
Buy on hype sell on news — you guys should know that, so stop trying to spin it as a failure.
I don’t understand why TC has it out so bad for the Pre. Everyone knows you’re swinging from Apple’s nuts. But even if you are, it would make sense to embrace signs of healthy competition. It will only force the product you love to improve.
Look at the limp release by Apple this iteration and tell me they don’t need to be trying harder.
I don’t think anyone would be blown away by the numbers, but they probably aren’t horrible. Ignoring the small number of available units, a slowed economy, more saturated market, smaller advertising blitz, and less of an addicted following are all reasons why the sales wouldn’t have hit higher numbers. Totally agree that it’s a marathon, so even if this wasn’t an overnight success, hopefully it’s enough to keep Palm in the market to provide improvements, competition, and further innovations.
I am like so over iJustine. Her whole video is about not getting what she wanted at one particular Best Buy and one Sprint store. It’s counter to my experience. Went to Sprint in Dallas first where they had only one left. Salesgeek was great. Let me play with it. Really like lots of the features. Wish there were more aps, but there will be soon I’m sure. Checked Best Buy today and they ad only plastic models of every smart phone. I’m going to buy.
What is the deal with Palm Pre? Its interface is a 90% copy of the iPhone with: touchscreen, multitouch, flick to scroll and acclerometer.
If you want an iPhone interface just get an iPhone.
And why would anyone get a Palm Pre with its 18 apps? Apps let a “smart” phone lets you edit Excel files, has a talking dictionary, look at MRI images, etc.
With no apps, the Pre is a “dumb” feature phone with full internet capability.
PS: For everyone who bought a Pre, Palm hasn’t even released the SDK yet to most vendors, you can wait about 1 year for them to develop the apps to get anywhere near the utility of an iPhone or Blackberry.
Its funny how people are treating it as a recessions phone. For dear god the cheapest plan is 70$ a month, same goes for the iphone. If you want a recessions phone, Go with metro PCS or something and pay 30$ a month for unlimited talk and text, or pay as you go for even cheaper (depends on how much you use the phone). Now if you are willing to shell out 70$ a month for mobile phone service, does 100$ really make a difference? Thats a month and a half of service only!!
These are far from cheap phones to have, you would be spending (this is for two years, as you have to stick with the plan for two years after getting these phones, besides the cheap one of course):
100/200 + 70*24 = 1780/1880$ for two years of phone service, versus
30*24 = 720$ for a free phone with 30$ and you get unlimited calling + texting
So you may now stop calling the iphone or the palm pre priced for recession
I am not in the market for a new phone as I am a very happy with Windows Mobile 6.1, but Palm Synergy would influence my purchasing decision.
I expect Palm’s market share to ramp up as people discover the Pre.
I got the Pre on Sat and I was very happy that i didn’t have to wait in line, palm doesn’t have the fan base which apple has, so no long lines. It is really an impressive phone. Also, sprint offers unlimited sms and free GPS. The only draw back is the small number of apps that is available in the app store.
Most of the people i know own(ed) an iphone, but they were really impressed with the Pre. Its too early to say how good sprint is since i am a new customer, but so far their customer service has been really helpful.
Sprint: the Pre broke all our sales records! http://tcrn.ch/3QR
/discussion
Erick, with a ck, what’s with defending the iPhone with your last breath?
I say give the Palm Pre and the industry some time. At least Palm is giving it a shot.
Not all of us fell in love with the iPhone. Not all of our hopes and dreams have been fulfilled via 3G goodness. Not even with the iPhone 3GS (which I’ve read a million times, stands for SPEED).
Hype has gotten a hold of you my friend. iHype.
If you want speed, buy a rocket.
The Pre is dead but Palm won’t admit it yet. Palm must be nearly out of money, prior to the announcement of the Pre their stock was under TWO DOLLARS.
Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile all have a huge advantage over Palm, not only in the amount of phones that are out there but those three are backed by very successful companies with deep pockets (Google, RIM and Microsoft).
Developers for apps will go where the money is, Palm is on its last legs and even if they sell half a million Pre phones, that is not going to cut it with 18 (maybe 21) Android phones coming out THIS year. RIM selling Blackberry Curves like hotcakes. And Windows mobile… well it sucks but Microsoft has lots of money and resources. Not to mention Palm hasn’t EVEN released the SDK yet to general vendors yet.
Multitasking needs apps to multitask, the Pre has 18 apps, with no SDK released to vendors.
Developers go where the biggest installed base so they can make the most money. They are not going to develop a lot of stuff for the Pre when there are bigger markets in Blackberry, Android and Apple which are already well established with over 30+ million phones.
Not only that but Apple has the entire iPhone universe: iTunes, podcasts, video podcasts, movies, TV shows all formatted for the iPhone. A million accessories for the iPhone. 50,000 apps+ and growing.
If Palm isn’t bought by some huge company its dead within 2 years (and so is your Pre).