Pre Sales May Be Slowing. Yes? Nooooooooo!
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 24, 2009 at 3:23 PM PT
Now this is just getting silly.
Pali Research says sales of the Palm Pre are slowing. RBC’s Mike Abramsky says they aren’t and claims 325,000 to 375,000 have been sold to date, ahead of his expectations.
Citing some decidedly unscientific poll data, Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede suggests the device is plagued by build-quality issues and a high exchange/return rate, potentially 40 percent. Abramsky says it’s between two and three percent and calls BS on the build-quality issue.
“Most buyers appear delighted with their new Pre user experience,” Abramsky said in a research note Friday. “Pre satisfaction appears higher than legacy Palm devices (e.g., Treo), affirming improved execution from the ‘New’ Palm, including engineering, manufacturing, quality and process improvements.”
So, Pre sales are slowing. Or, they’re not.
And exchange/return rates are high.
Unless they’re not.
And these analysts are on point.
Unless, of course, they’re not. Too bad it’s impossible to tell without official numbers from Palm (PALM) or Sprint (S).
Comments
Isn’t it obvious that when 30% of a stock is Short you will see a proclivity trashing the stock. That is 100%, not 99%, of what is happening to Palm. All those Anal-cysts that Shorted the stock wishing their hackneyed adage prevailed, “buy on the rumour and sell on the news,” are getting squeezed. It is ugly, the stench of the blood of those that Shorted Palm is unbearable.
The fact is that Palm has sold close to 400,000 Pres in the span of six weeks, and even though it does not match iPhone sales, it is a respectable number for a phone that made its debut only six weeks ago. I for one would never trade my Pre for an iPhone and would happily demonstrate to anyone why the Pre is substantially a better phone working on a better platform without the usual hyperbole associated with Apple fanboys. Take that extra memory out of the iPhone 3GS and I will show you side by side why the Pre is faster and better. My point is extra memory would make most programs run substantially faster but it still doesn’t necessarily manifest a substantive improvement.
Posted by darius arya at July 25th, 2009 at 9:02 pmas with all analysts, they are guessers. so take anything they say with a grain of salt. i wish the markets did the same.
to the previous commenter (darius). it is nice to see someone as passionate about the pre as the millions upon millions of iphone users are. it is funny how you make it seem like being a “fanboy” is a bad thing while you are clearly a “fanboy” of the pre.
i have not used the pre, but i have seen it. the os seems nice, but you have to admit the hardware leaves quite a bit to be desired. palm had years AFTER the iphone and THAT is the BEST they could do? also, every review of the pre the i have seen has said that it is nice, but not better than the iphone. the pre (like every other wannabe-iphone-killer) has 1 or 2 features that the iphone doesn’t have (yet). i think that the pre will be a success compared with other palm devices, but as usual the only iphone-killer is a new iphone.
Posted by glen engelmann at July 26th, 2009 at 5:18 pm