14 DAY TRIAL // Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm launched on the market its latest (and probably hottest) device back at the beginning of June on the airwaves of Sprint, yet it hasn't announced any sales figures, nor a return rate for the mobile phone. Even so, some analysts, such as Jesup & Lamont’s Kevin Dede, estimate that Pre's return rates are placed in the 40 percent area.
Although the Palm Pre is reportedly packing a wide range of capabilities and functionality, it seems that the manufacturing process has been neglected a little, which drove the company towards seeing nearly half of the units sent to the market coming back to its warehouse. The Pre has been already reported to pack a series of hardware glitches, yet the return rates seem to be much higher than expected.
It addition to that, the previsions also point towards a number of 300,000 Palm Pres sold on the market in June, the first month of availability. In case the estimations regarding the return rates prove true, this might affect a lot the traction the device was/is expected to see on the market. At the same time, the hardware issues that the phone has range from display problems to case glitches and defects of the slider.
Moreover, it seems that there are some customers who consider the smartphone not as feature-packed as believed. For example, a recent survey conducted by Strategy Analytics shows that there are a lot of users who would like for the Pre to include an on-screen virtual keyboard to complement the physical one. Even so, Dede gives Palm a “sell” rating and says that the company's stock is worth around $12.50.
On the other hand, as already pointed out before, Palm seems more interested in the success of its new mobile platform, the webOS, and not as much in that of the Pre. Even so, it still needs to take care of the number of Pres it manages to sell on the market, as this is the first device in a possible future line that will run under the webOS.