AT&T reports third-quarter earnings Thursday and by all accounts, they should be strong enough, thanks to the sheer size of the company’s footprint and, of course, its exclusive carrier rights to the iPhone.
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.
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
Sprint best step up its marketing efforts for the Pre because according to Pali Research, demand for Palm’s new device is slowing, and quickly. During the week ending June 26, Pali estimates that Sprint sold 50,000-60,000 Pre handsets. In the weeks that followed, it sold “less than 40,000,” and then, “over 30,000”–again, according to Pali. Now the research outfit says sales have declined by another 5,000 units.
Are sales of the Pre slowing or not? Without official numbers from Palm or Sprint, it’s nearly impossible to tell. But that hasn’t stopped analysts from taking a stab at it. Earlier this week, Pali research claimed Pre sales were tapering off. Now Pacific Crest is saying they remain “robust.”
Post-Pre launch, Palm may be, in the words of CEO Jon Rubinstein, “exactly where we hoped we would be.” But how long the company will stay there is an open question. Because according to Pali Research, Pre sales slowed again last week.
Palm seems to have satiated pent-up early demand for its new Pre smartphone, constrained supplies be damned. In a pair of investor notes issued today, analysts at Pali Research and JP Morgan say that sales of the Pre have tapered off to a point where supply and demand are roughly in parity.
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.
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.
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.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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