Despite the early fanfare and limited inventory at launch, Sprint doesn’t seem to be hitting it out of the park with the new Palm Pre. Earlier this month we reported on some channel checks by JNK Securities analyst Mike Ehrlich, who called 50 Sprint stores and found out that sales were lackluster. Yesterday, he issued a new report based on channel checks from last Thursday and Friday, Week 5 after the Pre’s launch. Of the stores willing to discuss sales volumes, here is the breakdown of demand on a per-store basis:
- Week 5 Palm Pre Sales Per Sprint Store
- 10 units or less: 30% (vs. 40% the prior week)
- 10 to 20 units: 45% (vs. 33% the prior week)
- 20 to 30 units: 18% (vs. 16% the prior week)
- 30 to 50 units: 12% (no comparable)
The sales seem to be stabilizing, with 45 percent of stores reporting 10 to 20 units sold last week, up from 33 percent the week before. Stores reporting 20 to 30 units sold, and 30 to 50 units, also increased. The only sold-out situations appeared at three stores expecting new shipments. Ehrlich writes:
It has been clear for the last few weeks that Sprint is now meeting the current demand and that the ’sold out’ scenarios common just after launch have ended – if they do occur (as they did this week), they are a temporary scenario while the store waits that day for a new shipment. Finding a Palm Pre at a Sprint store should not be difficult at the current time. Sales also seem to have stabilized
The Palm Pre is easily the best phone that Sprint offers, so at the very least it should be a boon for getting existing customers to upgrade and sign new contracts. But the true test of whether or not the Palm Pre is a success will be the extent to which it can attract new customers to come to Sprint from other carriers. Based on Ehrlich’s surveys, that doesn’t seem to be happening much. Only 7 percent of the stores surveyed reported that a majority of Palm Pre sales were coming from new customers to Sprint, with about 30 percent saying that the majority is coming from upgrades from existing Sprint customers, and two thirds saying it is a mix.
Sprint has about 1,000 stores, so surveying 50 random ones may or may not be indicative of what is going on throughout the network. So treat this as a data point, until Sprint or Palm choose to disclose actual sales figures. But if this distribution of sales holds across all of Sprint’s stores, it would amount to between 20,000 to 30,000 units sold each week, well below the 50,000 to 60,000 weekly sales estimated at the end of June.
That’s great, but they are only looking at sprint stores… the pre is also available at BestBuy and other retailers…
Distribution is key too. They should find ways to increase it and make it more accessible for buyers. Alot can be done to make the Pre more popular. Right now, iPhone is the choice for most people.
Really? Sales show otherwise. For example, for the last 2 quarters, BlackBerry outsold iPhone 2-1.
BlackBerry devices are available on all the networks, in the US, and iPhone is only available on ATT. Sooo…can’t really compare those two.
different people want different phones. all ppl may not like iphone, after all.
Great point. I know that my radioshack is selling them like crazy.
Can’t use “ho-hum” in the title if you include such complications.
So glad I ditched my iphone for a Pre!!!!1
I still think the Palm can have a good fight with the iPhone, but something is still missing. Maybe they should work harder for the next one. Embrace the community a littile bit more. It’s all about the people.
- Darren at AdExcel dot Com
I want a Pre, but the lack of apps is really bringing my odds of purchase way down. It would be really nice if they release the SDK, and apps finally start rolling out. If they can’t get that up and running to any respectable amount of apps, I’m going to change my plan. Either the iPhone or Hero, when it comes out.
The numbers in the article seem to give the exact opposite indication…If more stores are selling more units (as shown by the percentages), doesn’t that mean that sales are actually increasing and not yet stabilized?
No, sales are just coming back up to where they were in earlier weeks, hence stabilizing. I should have made that clearer.
It’s OK, you’re not a journalist.
Low blow
The pre is fugly, period… Looks like the nokia pebble, and has no class. The blackberry 8900 however is gorgeous, imo the best looking phone on the market. As far as power nokia has a few handsets that kill the iphone. Palm is just garbage, and sprint the “now network” is perfect for such a pos.
iPhone is unparralled in internet browser, HOWEVER it has crappy reception/call quality, bulky *because you have to have a case for it* NO BATTERY LIFE whatsoever, The inbox is just meh (using mobile safari w/ gmail is best option.) and oversimplifies a lot of basic features or simply leaves them out (i.e. customization etc.)
I personally prefer a blackberry, but I have a few bones to pick with their handsets as well. It just irritates me that the iPhone is the holy grail of phones, and everything is compared to it. But in reality it is just not that insanely great.
Ok… take a deep breath, skip that next cup of coffee and back away from the mobile phone.
the Palm Pre would sell better if it weren’t on Sprint. no one wants to sign a 2 year contract with one of the worst carriers in the game
What is so bad about Sprint? Look at all the bitching about ATT and their service on iPhone.
Nothing wrong with Sprint. I’ve had it for about a month now and I have had absolutely no issues. Great data speed too.
Two thirds of stores report that about 50% (”a mix”) of new pre buyers are coming from a different carrier. That seems pretty significant to me.
I’m still on the fence, but really want a GSM version. I might break down and buy one without the contract agreement, so I can sell it on later when a GSM version comes out.
Glass is either half full or half empty. The key stat is the 7 percent of stores reporting a majority of sales coming from new customers, that is down from 25 percent the prior week.
so it’s the trend that is problematic, it sounds like. hrm…
I think Palm should have kept HotSync for the original Palm Users. Still seems to be a cool phone, but I think Palm forgot some of their loyal users.
More existing customers would upgrade to palm pre if sprint doesn’t force them to upgrade their plans to more expensive ones.
I went to Sprint yesterday to check out the Pre. Either I don’t understand how the UI is supposed to work, or their display model was busted because basic intuitive gesturing didn’t really respond. Oh, and the Sprint sales reps were too busy talking to each other to help sell their product. 10 year sprint customer, about to drop them because of their shitty salespeople. The Pre in the store was their last shot.
Is it me or is everyone just missing the simple fact that switching to Sprint just isn’t a reasonable option!! By far the worst coverage. Just talk to someone with any Sprint phone.
Actually I have superior service with Sprint than I did with AT&T.
What’s the alternative? AT&T? I’ve been a Sprint customer for 10 years. At one time, I loathed them. However, they have been doing better about certain things.
Quite honestly, neither one is that great. Being that I’m already with Sprint, I really don’t think I want to deal with getting an iPhone with AT&T.
There’s always Verizon when it gets the iPhone…
Umm… I have Sprint, and coverage is great where I am (and for the record, it’s Northwestern Wisconsin… I’m a couple hours away from any major market). Heck, I even get reception out at the cabin I vacation at once a year.
All cell phone networks have places where they are terrible and places where they are good. The very reason I don’t have an iPhone is because I don’t want to switch to AT&T… as it’s not as good around here.
Yeah, I think it’s just you, buddy. AT&T was, up until recently, the joke here in Chicago. In contrast, Sprint has worked perfect the 5 years I’ve lived in the city.
Sprint’s problem was never about the reliability or speed of their network. Indeed, they are considered second only to Verizon in many major markets.
Their problem was, fair or not, the reputation of their customer service.
You might want to do a little research before publishing a story. Sprint actually has around 2,300 stores (over 200 stores just in California), so by using your per store average sold that puts them pretty damn close to their 50-60,000 a week target. And that’s not including Best Buy or Radio Shack.
Sprint has 1400 stores.
http://www.busi...ts_store_c.html
Those are company owned stores. They also have a network of around 1000 sprint branded, but not company owned stores that also sell the Pre. Just between 4 states, Sprint has over 1000 stores (CA, TX, FL & NY)
The Pre is awesome, but it’s also a very new platform with fewer third party apps than even Android.
There are a lot of us who have loved our Palm Pilots for a decade or more, but need the apps and versatility that we can’t quite get on the Pre yet.
Then there’s the “Sprint” factor. It’s a great phone, but I need it on a different carrier. GSM anyone?
Eric, do you have data on how this compared with the blackberry storm last Nov? Hard to tell in isolation if this is expected or actually higher than most other popular smartphones. Can’t compare to iPhone cause that’s just in an entirely different class (yes, i have one and switched from a bb
The figures for the number of Sprint stores is INCORRECT and helps highlight the flaws in this “channel check.” If they can’t get the number of stores correct, how good is their data?
Sprint has approximately 1,600 stores NOT 1,000. That alone would increase the number of Pre’s sold by a factor of 60% more. Not to mention some 20,000 distribution points. This “analyst” needs to do some more homework. He can start here:
http://www.busi...ts_store_c.html
sprint 6 month exclusive is no big deal as long as fast followed by multi SKU launches across other carriers – may even be helpful to tidy up the initial release bugs
apple needs to proliferate its mobile platform across sku’s to get good segment coverage (both phone and service wise) eventually but this will eventually take its toll on margins so makes sense to hold out until pre or android get closer to catching up
major worry w/ the pre is that they are selling at similar retail pricepoints but probably don’t have the lucrative apple like carrier rev share agreements — they were already going down the path of margin destruction with the centro, and run the risk of doing the same, essentially following in the footsteps of the moto razr
One of these days, we’ll have numbers from Sprint. It seems if it were not selling that well, that Sprint may want to get word out subtly first.
An SDK would help. I signed up, but no word. If Palm wants to get apps out, they need to get an SDK in developer’s hands!
“MyTouch” from Google debuts august 5th. product differentiation becomes harder and harder to come by. its already happened to the laptop and pc market. palm’s gonna need a strategic online presence to survive and compete.
only closed solutions that can make it now are apple (app store lock in) and rim (enterprise lock in)
webos needs to get onto other hardware from one or more volume leaders
didnt work for winmo or S60 because those os’s are too legacy
will work for android but diffusion is slow and handset manufacturers are diversifying their options
quickest way would be for samsung to buy palm and then ram webos into a meaningful % of its handsets / would also help global penetration where there is still a better chance of catching up to apple
That’s too bad, the Pre is a great device. I hope it does well enough to keep Palm afloat, cause I really want them to bring it over to Verizon….I’m so tired of Verizon’s crappy phone selection (I’m currently rockin’ the Storm, and I’m really starting to hate the thing).
Why does techcrunch have an anti-Pre bias? Most articles about it are tilted toward the negative. This is merely one analyst using a highly biased and unreliable sampling technique. Respected analysts from Piper Jaffray have suggested the the Pre is doing quite well. Its not going to unseat the iPhone because iPhone has become like windows, huge install base that will blindly upgrade with minor feature upgrades. Palm and other underdogs will undoubtedly spur huge innovations as they try to capture more market share against the monolith that Apple has become.
It was because they didn’t get to preview a demo of the Pre before it was released. Supposedly other blogs like BGR and news outlets got sent a demo but the Crunch network was left out. They’ve been having a hissy fit ever since.
Surprisingly though this post from Erick was the more fair ones compared to the other previous garbage posts by MG and John “Pre-Hater” Biggs.
I ask the same question. If you search for Pre, the first page articles even includes pre-launch topics. The amount of coverage and the ones that they do seem to cover lately speaks volume.
What I don’t get is how their sales are still so ho-hum when the thing is being advertised on practically every website in the country. Every streaming-video portal I go to starts with that now annoying ad with the blonde girl being worshipped by orange people.
If the estimated sales per store had been extrapolated with the correct number of Sprint stores (1,600) then sales figures would definitely not be considered ho-hum (I think that’s a terribly misleading headline given the week over week increase). New extrapolation would be 32,000 – 48,000 per week, NOT including the other 20,000 distribution sites. Throw in a measly 2 phones per distribution site per week and sales would then range from 72,000 to 88,000!
How about you go back to the drawing board, scratch out your 1000-retail store estimate, and recalculate your figures using the following numbers:
1,275 Retail Stores
16,000 Distribution Points
You’re actually way off by about 1,727% off. Which means Sprint could be selling 345,500 – 518,250 units a week rather. That’s extremely well above the sales figure you’ve pointed out.
And by the way, that’s not including retail sales and distribution points from Best Buys, Radio Shack, and WalMart. It’s overwhelming once you’ve applied more accurate numbers to your formula, isn’t it?
http://www.goog...mp;oq=&aqi=
Wrong link… here it is: http://news.zdn..._22-184141.html
Doesn’t anyone get the fact that Apple is the flavour du jour .. it’s got the uber geek factor and is the safe mobile device to back.
Heck just forget all the things it utterly sucks at or is missing as it’s got 65,000 apps and good enough email functionality.
Reality is not everyone wants an iphone, not everyone wants / can be on at&t and there are a growing selection of as good device available now. I have a Tour, Bold, Storm, Pre AND iPhone 3GS and each has its pros and cons. iPhone does the web and Apps very well. The Tour is likely the best BB on the market right now wifi or not.
The Pre is a nice device. Personally I hate sliders and I think the keyboard but people that have used it love the functionality and web experience. As note Palm needs to get on other carriers before Apple does our just forget the hardware race. Sell WEB OS and pack it up. If Web OS was on the Tour is would be a killer device.
You just have two user groups – those that enjoy a gadget and the cellphone of the moment and those that want a solid functional device. With iPhone starting to become as common as the razr the cellphone crowd will move on. Apple really has limited growth as the bulk of all sales is upgrades. I cannot wait to see sales post launch .. so mid August .. they’ll be as many iPhone sitting in the store.
Anyone can craft a catching headline and spin the numbers in your favor. Apple backers have to knock down anything positive and spin the story to keep the illusion going.
Every article I see on the Pre at Tech Crunch seems to have a bit of disdain towards the product. I don’t get it. Leave the fanboyistic commentary to the comments section and stick with the facts, however in-factual they may be. There’s a good reason this site hasn’t made its way to my RSS or bookmarks.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
This is the problem with the web.
Any unqualified, biased, and frankly uneducated (with respect to the industry) blogger can post up an article vieweable by a number of people.
This may unfairly sway people on the fences with a particular product. This is why I don’t like using Tech Crunch for daily tech news.
While this site gets many interesting news, it’s somehow obvious that Apple has bought its bloggers. Shame