Pre top-selling phone at Best Buy US, Drops Canadian Pre to $150 14
Fri, 18 Sep 2009 8:48 am EDT
Plenty of people go to Best Buy to purchase their new phones, and it would seem that many of them have been heading to the big blue box to buy a Palm Pre. If you were to head over to the Best Buy mobile phone website and drop down to the Best Selling section, you’d see this odd little phone called the “Sprint Palm Pre” sitting atop the heap. Thanks to David for the tip!
Of course, it probably helps that the Pre very recently saw a considerable price cut and that Best Buy Mobile customers don’t have to deal with the silly mail-in-rebate you get when buying direct from Sprint. Oh, and that big Palm Pre header you get in the mobile phones section likely doesn’t hurt. Still, it’s nice to see the Pre sitting atop at least one retailer’s sales chart, especially one that sells pretty much every phone on the market.
Meanwhile, mtesm lets us know that Best Buy's listing for the Palm Pre on Canada's Bell Network currently pegs the Pre at $150 Canadian, a full $50 less than Bell's official price. Best Buy says that the "sale" ends on Sept 24th, but we're wondering just how long Bell can continue to charge $50 more than what Sprint is charging.
14 Comments
Not messing with a mail in rebate was a big incentive to making the purchase at Best Buy. Awesome price for northern neighbors.
Where is the iPhone? They sell iPhones too, isn't it?
Awesome news, I love Sprint, I love Best Buy, and I really love the Palm Pre.....Talk about having all the good eggs in one basket. Best Buy must be making a killing with all this high end marketing for phones etc, as people will also buy other stuff while in the store.
And IPhone isnt in there cause it is definitely not a big seller for BB. Most IPhone people are ATT and Apple fanboys who dont even want ot give another platform a chance, so most go to the ATT store to get them, plus this way they can try to talk ATT into giving them a cheaper price (on phone and plan) since they are always ripping everyone off in the first place.
Well, I work in Best Buy Mobile, and as much as I love my Pre and would never trade it for an iPhone (as I tell my customers who are interested in a Pre, I also inform them to understand that is my preference, the iPhone is an amazing phone, I just personally prefer my Pre) I have to admit that the Pre would not be at the top of that list above the iPhone, except for the fact that we have only been able to have maybe 10-20 3GS iPhones in stock in the last month. We have about 5 in stock as of yesterday, and that's all we have received in weeks.
I wonder how they measure this. It can't possibly be raw volume. Perhaps it's some ratio of sales volume to supply? I really find it hard to believe that Best Buy is selling more Pre's than iPhones. I'm a very satisfied Pre owner, but we should be realistic here.
Also I must admit my perspective overall is a little different, because I'm in West Texas, which for the most part is ATT territory, mainly because all of the small carriers out here were TDMA/GSM and got bought up by ATT, so their "rural" coverage tends to extend further. Also Sprint is now the only carrier without 3G here. . . though we already have WiMax :)
As @luke above says, this is very realistic, if you hardly got any iPhone to sell. We all love our Pre, but realistically looking at it, we also knows the iPhones are selling significantly more than Pre, however, Apple will grease the supply chain to ATT "first", as a priority, before the retailers. That's common-sense!
Now, the interesting shot, I find here and this may not necessarily have a correlation to the Pre sales, but I think the Pre might be in a very good opportunity to steal a lot of RIM's customers. And these results may or may not be the reason why. If you don't believe me, check out this story from InfoWorld.
That Infoworld link doesn't work.
Sorry, here's the url (BlackBerry Tour has 50 percent return rate):
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/analyst-blackberry-tour-has-50-perce...
I believe this article is spot on, because prior to owning a Pre, I had a Blackberry Bold and the damn trackball would routinely get stuck. I'd be rolling and rolling and nothing would be moving on screen. Talk about device with "moving parts" that can go bad - anyways, not sure how these became so popular in the consumer space - they are so "business centric".
I find it odd too sonce not all Best Buy stores sell Pr?'s, but maybe it all balances out.
Being an ecommerce manager myself, I wouldn't find it odd at all if the "top selling products" list of an e-shop didn't exactly reflect which products are really the top selling products, but which products I'd like to become top selling products.
In other words, I'm sure in many stores the top selling products list is just another way to promote some products.
Could be legit though.
That Infoworld link doesn't work.
Hehe maybe I'll get my Pre while they're on sale :P
It is great to see the Pre doing well at Best Buy. I bought my Pre from Best Buy and the thing that convinced me to buy, other than no messing with mail in rebates, was that fact that I could try the phone for 30 days and get my money back if I did not like it. On top of that, the Best Buy folks were honest and really fun to deal with. One had a Pre and the other an Iphone and they let me mess with them. I am glad I got the Pre.