Pre Sales Levelling off? 58
It appears that you should no longer have problems getting a Palm pre at Sprint Retail locations. An analyst at JNK Securities ran a survey at 50 Sprint stores and concludes that
It has been clear for the last few weeks that Sprint is now meeting the current demand and that the ’sold out’ scenarios common just after launch have ended - if they do occur (as they did this week), they are a temporary scenario while the store waits that day for a new shipment. Finding a Palm Pre at a Sprint store should not be difficult at the current time.
We found the story at TechCrunch, who extrapolated from the numbers that Sprint is selling between 20,000 and 30,000 units a week. As forum member SharonW points out, however, TechCrunch's numbers seem to be based on there being about 1,000 Sprint retail locations, when the actual number is likely higher (Sprint says 1200, SharonW estimates 1600). So 20 to 30 thousand is likely a lowball figure.
Until Palm actually deigns to release some actual numbers on Pre sales, we are left with the best estimates of analysts for sales numbers. In the meantime, the survey does seem to imply that retail inventory is starting to fill out -- hopefully that means telesales and websales will start happening soon.
Anybody out there still in the hunt for a Palm Pre?
58 Comments
I dunno about that. At least in Appleton, Wisconsin and surrounding cities Best Buy is always out of stock. I've purchased a few Pre's from them, and even when I am in the store I ask them how their stock is and they say they either have only 1-2 in stock or they are out of stock.
This isn't just at one Best Buy either, we have 3 in our area - and they all tell the same story. Touchstones are out of stock too, Sprint store and Best Buy alike.
Checking twitter, there are many people saying things like "Can't wait to get my Palm Pre". Of course, this could be people outside the US.
The Pre is finally featured in next week's Best Buy circular, so that probably means they're getting more.
The headline sounds like something an iTroll would write.
Sales aren't leveling off; supplies are increasing. Beast Buy is taking deposits for their shipments and you can't buy them on the phone or on Sprint's site, so how can sales be leveling off when there are plenty of people at plenty of places who can't purchase one yet?
If I wanted biased, fact-challenged analysis, I'd have gone to the NY Times site instead of here.
I got my pre the 1st day it came out, from a sprint store in Brookyn. I was the 4th customer in line and got there 5min after open. This store seems to aways have a stock. This phone rocks!!!! More apps please.
Only 30 apps is getting on my nerves. I might put mine on eBay pretty soon. I love this phone but the arguments about 'be patient' etc are wearing thin when I see so many new homebrews (that I just can't take the time to play with right now).
It has only been out for a little over a month now. Im sure that if you are looking for over 10,000 worthless apps there is another phone out there for you.
I didn't see that, but that just means they changed their pricing structure somehow. Your final cost after rebate is still the same,
Had to call up five Sprint stores before finding one. The rest daid their waiting list could take a week to service. Loving my first 48 hours wirh the Pre!
I think there is still a fair amount of pent-up demand. I know that one other colleague and I are waiting for full EAS support before jumping in. I'm sure others are waiting for Verizon and others to get the Pre, since it is only 6 months away (hopefully).
As strange as it seems, I heard from two Best Buys, then as I was scrabbling to find my Pre, that Sprint/Palm plan to RE-launch the Pre at the end of the July, after the iPhone 3GS buzz has faded. Truthfully, I really don't know what a RE-launch would look like, and I am pretty sure the 3GS buzz lasted only about 1 week.
Thanks iTroll. You bitch and complain about the Pre not having a few features a 5 ys old Treo would have (which hasn't been around for 5 years), yet even modern Treos don't have 25% of the features that the Pre possesses. Synching is at the very core of the OS!! How can you say it doesn't support sync?! Do you any idea what you are talking about? Also, this software platform is damn-near the most open platform ever created!! People are writing apps in the Linux based OS in their spare time and giving them away freely because of how easy and fast the process is! Do you even own a Pre or is this just your lame attempt to disuade others in getting it? Keep your bs to yourself, iTroll!
I think that Palm is orchestrating their numbers on the pre on purpose to keep themselves in a good cash position: don't build more than we can pay for, sell what we have so that we have cash in hand to pay for the next shipment when it arrives. This is good news for everybody. Palm will do better, have more customers, and be able to provide a better experience for all of us down the road if they don't push too hard and send the company over the cliff.
Annie--
I mentioned in one of my earlier threads on the forum, About a week and a half ago Fox News ran a special 3 minute 'showdown' between the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS. They had a guy from consumerreports.com come in and pro/con both devices.
While this segment was airing, they had their 'Fast Facts' ticker running at the bottom, and ran a 'fact' that Sprint has sold over 300,000 phones in roughly the first month of sales.
That number was about a week ago...so it's gotta be higher by now.
foxnews.com/search-results/m/24315910/cell-wars.htm#q=palm+pre
I believe that is the link to the aforementioned video...check the fact ticker at the bottom, you will see the "300,000 sold" fact
Ok, I picked my Pre up Friday (after what seemed like forever waiting (1st for release; 2nd for availability)). My wife is still waiting to upgrade. I love this phone; sure there are things that I think are still needed or can be improved. Overall this is one of the hottest devices (not just phones) I have seen. There were so many things I wanted to try b4 I bought it, but since I have gotten I have forgotten all those. There are so many thing that it can do, I am like "Umm.. what do I want to do next?" So far I have only really explored the phone/messaging side. The ease of multitasking and having what I need available regardless of what I am doing at the current time, is amazing.
TechCrunch didn't even bother extrapolating sales from all the other distribution points. A Business Week article from January showed the total (which I think includes Sprint stores) at 20,000. If we back out the Sprint stores (I'll use Sprint's 1,200 figure here as I had extracted the info from the same Business Week article by working the store closings percentage backwards and coming up with 1,600) that leaves 18,800 other distribution points which include Walmart, Radioshack and Best Buy.
Even if these stores are getting minimal amounts of phones, let's go really minimal - 2 per week. That would account for (based on TechCrunch's already faulty methodology) an additional 37,600 phone sales per week. Adding the two sales figures from 1200 stores and 18,800 distribution points you'd be somewhere around the 61,600 - 73,600 figure per week or AN INCREASE in sales, not decrease. The increase likely being due to having more stock on hand to sell.
In either case, they're just all over the map with ridiculousness in coming up with figures. The extremely limited channel check showed an increase in sales. That should have been the ONLY take away.
And thanks for the shout out, guys! :D
Shouldn't the headline be "Palm Pre Supply Finally Meets Demand."
I just don't think of 25,000 units a week as "sales-leveling" but I'm was not educated with the particular businessy jargon.
This is absolutely untrue. I waited for 3 weeks to get a replacement Pre at a corp. store in Iowa. They have only been getting 5 new phones a week and still have a waiting list that is over 90 people long. Luckily the manager was nice enough to let me exchange my phone when they got in the recent shipment instead of making me wait until warranty handsets(phone only no accessories) were sent out. Or waiting on the list.