Sprint CFO: What iPhone?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on June 24, 2009 at 7:24 AM PT
It’s been three weeks since the Palm Pre debuted and Sprint is still having trouble keeping it in stock. This according to Sprint Nextel CFO Bob Brust, who says supplies of the new handset continue to be tight.
“We still have a backlog of subscribers but it’s not unmanageable and we get shipments every week,” Brust told attendees of the Wachovia Equity Conference. “We’ll be short for a while but we’re catching up.”
Good thing. The new Palm (PALM) handset is not going to be much good at stemming subscriber losses if you can’t keep it in inventory. And as Sprint (S) well knows, there are other phones on the market, including one that’s $100 cheaper than the Pre, without the rebate.
Oh, and speaking of the iPhone 3GS, Brust says Apple’s latest handset hasn’t been having much of an impact on sales the Pre, though Apple (AAPL) sold one million units compared with a reported 50,000 for the Pre during its first weekend at market. “We don’t see any big change since the iPhone came out yet,” Brust said. “That may happen.”
That may happen. Heh.
Comments
As a “former” Palm Pre owner the issue of the cracked internal LCD screens which rendered the phone unusable forced me return it to Sprint. This problem of cracked internal LCD screens seems to be fairly widespread from reading Internet reports.
According to a Sprint regional manager it is the keyboard that is culprit. I had thought it was the command button and still and not convinced that there is some involvement of the button as the photos of the cracks all seem to originate from that area. Whether that is a design, material or manufacturing problem was not disclosed. It is an issue that any potential customer should checkout before making the purchase.
Let me add that when the phone worked I loved it and I would have replaced it had it not been from the horrendously terrible customer service at Sprint. Both Palm and Sprint were less than forthcoming on the issue and hopefully this site and the Internet will keep us up to date on developments. The Palm Pre has a lot of very nice features and Internet service was very fast but dependability is a concern at this point at least in my mind.
Posted by Robert Mann at June 24th, 2009 at 9:15 am“Brust says Apple’s (AAPL) latest handset hasn’t been having much of an impact on sales of the Pre …”
Of course, not. Since the supply of Pres is so limited, they are not gauging the real demand and, thus, cannot tell whether the new iPhone has had an impact or not.
Posted by George Slusher at June 24th, 2009 at 9:54 amHere is a tiny impact: I will upgrade my 3G to the GS in December, when I am eligible. I have had a lot of palm pilots over the years, and the thing I remember about them is, they were terrible to sync. Probably because I had to use that dreadful Windows, which poisons everything it touches.
Posted by David Owens at June 24th, 2009 at 11:55 amat any rate, NO MORE PALMS!