14 DAY TRIAL // The Palm Pre went live in the US three days ago, and the first reports on how the device performed during its first weekend in the wild show that the launch was a success. As expected, the reports on the number of units that were sold on Saturday and Sunday differ a lot, yet it seems that they all place it somewhere between the 50,000 and 100,000 marks, which is considered by some analysts to be a success. While the stores managed to sell out their stocks, the momentum might be sustained with fast refreshments.
For what it's worth, both Sprint and Palm need the Pre to remain successful, especially since Apple announced yesterday that the new version of its iPhone, the 3G S, would come to the market in about 10 days. Although the improvements that the new iPhone model don't seem too impressive (some of the features have been already present in other devices for years), the competition between Pre and Apple's handset tightens up.
Even so, it seems that not only Sprint's customers went for the Pre; some came from other carriers, including AT&T. According to Soleil/Nelson Alpha Research Inc. analyst Michael Nelson, a number of 75,000 to 80,000 Pres were sold during the first weekend, and only 80 percent of the sales went to Sprint's customers. “Although we expect most Pre sales to be to existing Sprint customers, we do believe Sprint has an opportunity to capitalize on the media buzz surrounding the Pre,” he said.
According to the news on the Web, the Pre stock at Sprint's stores ranged from 200 units at the flagship Manhattan store, to 30 to 50 Pres at the carrier's Chicago stores. Sprint and Palm need to boost inventories to keep the sales high, and it seems that they will indeed ship more handsets to the operator's locations this week, though there are no exact details on when that will happen, nor on what number of units will be delivered.
Neither Sprint nor Palm has commented on the number of units sold during the first weekend or on the shortages. Even so, it seems that the device managed to perform as expected and, although it hasn't reached the same sales volume as the iPhone (which toped 150,000 units sold in the first two days), it might be able to sell in more than 1 million units in the first year, as a recent iSuppli estimation pointed out.