14 DAY TRIAL // Palm's Pre mobile phone is one of the most anticipated devices of the year, and it seems that this might become a problem for the handset maker when it will launch it on Sprint's airwaves, at least this is what some analysts tend to believe. To be more precise, Palm is expected to have only a number of 375,000 units in stock at launch, which will not meet the demand the smartphone is forecast to see.
Pre is expected to turn into a strong rival to Apple's iPhone handset, and all focus is on the performance of the already available device when talking about it. Thus, due to the fact that the iPhone was sold in more than 1 million units during the first three days of availability, says Bloomberg, Palm will not be able to meet the demand in case it will have less than 400,000 units in stock at launch.
“It’s important to have a success like selling out,” said Hugues de La Vergne, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Dallas, reports Bloomberg. “The Pre has to live up to the hype or else they’ll lose their momentum to rival products coming out soon after,” de La Vergne added.
Sunnyvale, California-based Palm introduced the device back in January, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas, and it seems that its stock has more than tripled since then. Both Palm and Sprint need the Pre to become successful, as the maker posted profit loss seven quarters in a row, while the carrier lost around 4.5 million subscribers since 2007.
In case it sells out, Pre might be able to get enough attention to make customers shift their focus from the iPhone. In addition, it also includes a series of features unavailable with the latter, such as a removable battery, the possibility for users to shuffle through applications like a deck of cards, and also multi-task capabilities, as well as both touchscreen capabilities and a QWERTY keypad.
“It’s a make-or-break product for them,” said Brad Williams, a fund manager at MTB Investment Advisors in Baltimore. At the same time, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said back in March on the release of Pre that “we don't want it to be too early where there's only a handful of Pre's in the whole country. We want to make sure that we can also have production ramped up at a reasonable level before we launch the product.”
For the time being, neither Palm nor Sprint have revealed details on the launch date or the price tag for the Pre, yet the phone has been announced to come in the first half of the year. “We’re working really closely with our carrier partner on distribution,” said Leslie Letts, a Palm spokeswoman.