Analysts who follow Palm are already rolling their eyes over TheStreet.com’s claim that Verizon has balked at adding the company’s new Pre handset to its lineup. In a research note this morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jonathan Goldberg dismissed it as “off base.”
Though its shares are up more than 900 percent since January, Palm remains a “show me” story. So says Susquehanna Financial analyst Jeffrey Fidicaro, who seems to think the Street is putting a bit too much faith in the company’s next-generation platform, webOS, and the devices that run on it.
If there’s a Guinness World Record for shortest-lived promotional offer by a wireless carrier, Sprint’s surely a front-runner for it. Just six or so hours after offering a $100 service credit to new subscribers who purchase a Palm Pre and port their numbers over from another carrier, Sprint canceled it. The company’s official statement after the jump.
Sprint effectively lowered the price of the Palm Pre today to $99 for new customers only, offering a $100 service credit to those who port their numbers over from another carrier. To be eligible for the promotion, customers must purchase the Pre along with a two-year service agreement and abandon their current carriers. UPDATE: Sprint has cancelled the offer. You’ll find further details, here.
Though it got off to a slow start, Palm’s App Catalog is slowly evolving into the ecosystem for which the company had hoped. It recently surpassed four million downloads and is poised for a bit of a growth spurt now that more applications have begun to appear on its virtual shelves. Indeed, in the last week, the number of applications available for the Pre increased by 40 percent to 58.
iPhone sales are trending well in the September quarter and Apple has app developers and its rivals to thank for it. This according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who says those two groups are doing a great deal to reinforce Apple’s brand.
A renewed advertising push for the Palm Pre and an increase in the number of applications available for it haven’t done much for the device’s sales. According to Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk, weekly Pre sales are holding steady in the mid-20,000 range at which they stabilized a few weeks back. One way for Sprint to spur sales, says Piecyk: Cut the price of the Pre to $99, or even 99 cents
Palm’s next webOS handset, the so-called Eos (codename: Pixie), is still in the pipeline, but it may not arrive at market for some time. Though some observers have speculated that the device would debut in the late fall in time for the holidays, others are now suggesting that a 2010 launch is more likely.
The Palm Pre is finally taking off in the Great White North. Canada’s Bell Mobility, which became the device’s exclusive Canadian carrier back in May, this morning announced a ship date and price for the Pre.
Good thing Palm withdrew investor Roger McNamee’s your-next-iPhone-will-be-a-Pre claim because there obviously wasn’t much truth to it. If there was, well, there would have been a massive rush on Pres nationwide this past month. And that clearly didn’t happen.
The Palm Pre has proven a far better curative for the handset maker than for Sprint, its exclusive carrier. Certainly, the Pre doesn’t appear to have done much to reverse Sprint’s decline. Reporting second-quarter earnings this morning, Sprint posted a loss of $384 million, or 13 cents a share as customers defected to rival carriers.
The consolidation of the prepaid cellphone market has begun in earnest. This morning, Sprint Nextel said it will acquire Virgin Mobile USA in a $483 million stock deal that will give the company a clear lead in the prepaid arena, where low prices are becoming ever more popular with consumers beaten into submission by the continuing recession.
Add another voice to the chorus of analysts claiming that sales of the Palm Pre have been on the decline these past few weeks. In a research note published this morning, CL King analyst Lawrence Harris, speaking to the controversy over sell-though numbers for the Pre, cast his lot with those who feel sales are slowing.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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