Palm Pre stock levels at Best Buy for entire US now leaked in full?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted June 4th 2009 7:15AM
posted June 4th 2009 7:15AM
[Via Everything Pre, thanks John]
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posted June 4th 2009 7:15AM
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I cant wait to see how many they sell ;D
I can see how the U.S. is going to be literally flooded with Palm Pres. They'd better be able to sell all of them out because they're counting on that money to build the next batch.
You think I'm just an Apple fanboy mocking Palm, but I'm sure even loyal Palm people must think this is a farce. This is pathetic for a company of even Palm's stature to have a rollout with such a tiny amount of units to sell. I do understand the financial position Palm is in, but it just makes it much harder for Palm to succeed in marketing this product. I doubt if people want to be waiting around to buy the Pre if they don't have any idea when they're going to be available. To hype a product up and then hardly have any in stock is extremely counterproductive.
me not able to get one will just make me even hugrier for one! rawr O.O
I dont think your mocking anyone,
i believe you have a valid point.
Palm will most likely fail here and disappear
Oh brother! How cute one of the biggest itrolls on Engadget ( iphonerulz) and the guy who posted this just yesterday on another Pre thread:
"ShirkPower @ Jun 3rd 2009 9:54PM
Fail iClone!
http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp9/airmanshirk/Iphone/iphone_palm_pre_ufc.jpg
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/05/28/official-mcnamee-casts-palm-pre-iphone-ladies/
Sorry but you just cant compete with Apple...
They have won the ipod war and they will win the phone war,
sandisk just gave up:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/03/sandisk_ceo_concedes_that_apples_ipod_has_won_the_war.html"
Are trying to pass off some more good old iBS as neutral commentary?
Ok, guys, NOONE will buy one and it will like soooooo fail and disappear, and we can all go and buy an iPhone like we are all supposed too, right?
Could have saved the acting and just posted that.
@ ShirkPower,
Look_Around_You just herbed all over your face!
Wack... my Radioshack in Duarte is only getting 2 Palm Pres
I think it's cute when Apple fanboys get scared about a phone that could be better then the iPhone. Too bad they don't see it as something good for everyone, as in competition.
Lol! Nice to see that Look_Around_You has been trolling around all the Apple blogs too.
I hope these numbers are in thousands!
Woah woah, this is worth staying up late for. I'd seen snippets on precentral, but if this is the whole thing, NICE!
Staying up for... the BB store I'm going to is getting 32 in, I don't even know how they managed that, but yea just getting there early in the morning now instead of the whole line thing.
wow i can't believe my store (princeton) didn't ever order any. well then again nobody around here has even talked about the pre. sadly...
i dont see miami in there :((((((((
This is going to be a disaster for Palm. Great hardware/software aside, which based on reviews I've read are mainly positive, they (Palm) look like they've screwed themselves with the promotion, marketing and soon-to-be-revealed sales/distribution debacle. Pretty sad if the unit is a winner otherwise.
The problem for Palm is they are launching their best product with a *last* place carrier!! They are not going to sell crap on Sprint especially if teh bigger carriers are going to get the Pre in 6 months.
The problem for Palm is they are launching their best product with a *last* place carrier!! They are not going to sell crap on Sprint especially if the bigger carriers are going to get the Pre in 6 months.
@--Ed, sprint, like a lot of phone carriers depend on where you live. A lot of us get great service with Sprint. Plus this is going to be an expensive phone if it was on the other carriers. Sprint planned this out they are going to be selling at a lower monthly price than their competition. Don't forget this phone requires services that most phones take as optional.
Palm planned this out**
(well I guess sprint did also)
My store will have 4.
it seems that Palm is trying the proven-to-be-successful "Cartman/Wii Build Hype by Limiting Stock" strategy....genius
glad someone caught on ^_^
The other half of that idea requires the masses to be foaming at the mouth for your product. It's funny to read Engadget talk about how this is the "most anticipated phone launch of the year" when it's basically unknown outside of the hardcore internet geek community. The ONLY place, and I like to think I keep my finger on the pulse of just about every major media outlet from television to printed media and the internet, that's hyping this phone so much is Engadget
All opinions of the Pre aside, and I truly believe it to be a great product btw, for one reason or another people just don't know or don't care about it's arrival. Call it bad marketing or a bad economy (or both), but you just don't see the level of excitement they need to slam this one out of the park.
>> "when it's basically unknown outside of the hardcore internet geek community."
So true... Engadget readers ≠ general public. Looking at existing Palm Treo/Centro users... a lot of them are business people or doctors, etc. I can't imagine them lining up for a new Palm phone.
In contrast... when Apple launched their first phone... people instantly knew, "a new phone from the guys who made the iPod." It was widely understood.
If someone mentions the Palm Pre, people say, "a new phone from the people who made the Treo/Centro." Especially because there is zero buzz from having no TV commercials and only a handful of Palm Pres per city at launch.
these look correct to me ; )
@216 & @SONYEDDIE Really? If I was Palm I would not be experimenting with marketing ploys. I would be doing my utmost to get the gadget into as many hands as quickly as possible before the competition had any chance to react. This is not one of many products for Palm. This IS the product that makes or breaks them. Unless there's another reason for the low release numbers.
Woah.. most stores aren't going to get any. Too bad.
i can see it now..ebay prices are bound to hit a few grover cleavelands!!
As I understand it, and is being left out of the article, this is inventory for the Best Buy stores only, and does not represent any inventories at Sprint stores... or any other stores that may have a contract with Sprint or Palm. Right?
This may be as representative of Best Buy's financial status or confidence in the product, rather than manufacturing capacity or financial position of Palm or their belief in their own product.
I'm just sayin... the story is incomplete on many levels.
Good point.
So, er, I was a bit bored and have nothing else to do - so the "Avail on hand" stock count will be... 2802. For whatever stores they are.
Wouldn't it make sense that these are only for the contract-free pres they are going to sell? They can't expect to sell many of those and the unit price is listed at $850.
I bet it is a fake. Easy to take the list of something else and change the name of the device. People will line-up for the Pre and Palm know it.
Hehe remember this??
"Actors paid to line up for iPhone launch"
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC54329520080825
Yes, it's Poland? And your point... ?
.
Here it is!
I remember when Palm launched the Treo 600 (at the time just as revolutionary as the Pre is now). They had tiny amounts of stock, it took months for most people to get them.
Yep I remember that. If Palm has < 75-100K units, this is going to be a disaster. They need to sell as many as they possibly can before iPhone v3 is available...
The fact of the matter is that outside the small world of gadget nerds the iPhone ---- whether deserved or not --- is enormously popular and has the vast majority of smartphone mindshare (or perhaps shared with BB). It already has a successful 2-year track record, and has the unmatched marketing resources and prowess of Apple behind it.
Compare this to a brand new device from Palm (who many only have a vague memory of) with limited marketing resources and sole availability solely on Sprint.
They have got to execute this launch perfectly and quickly ramp up production to have any chance of making a dent against the iPhone. Unfortunately they couldn't get this device out in the Spring and now have to contend with the fact that the new iPhone will now be detailed very soon and could get a lot of people to hold off on the Pre until they can try out the new iPhone first.
" Then again, why would someone go to the trouble of faking a 31 page PDF file showing Palm Pre inventories for every Best Buy in the US and Puerto Rico -- the internet just can't be so sad."
No, it is. I can think of various people/companies that would want to create a fake document to give the perception that Palm is screwing up...
Don't believe everything you read on the internet...
This is in fact legit, I'm a current employee at Best Buy and have been following the Palm Pre very closly, looks like only MAJOR marketing segments will be getting more than a couple, sadly my store will only be getting 2. I did get to take a look at one yesterday and play around with it and I am VERY impressed with the WEB OS, runs very smoothly and being a avid apple fan and Iphone owner since release I can say this device is very impressive and it's ONLY competition will be the Iphone it is that good.
Right now there are 100,000 people who want a Palm Pre, but only 890 who will be able to purchase it.
(like the commercial...)
BBY employee here.
Even if this were accurate, the data has still been transcribed. Absolutely no doubt or question about it. The font and formatting for RSS on those documents is all wrong. From what I've seen those numbers SEEM about right, but the poor reproduction of RSS calls the rest of it into question. Compare it against past inventory screens. There's no export to PDF option for RSS, and if it were a matter of a document showing inventory levels it'd be a much simpler .xls. Inventories are too fluid for a PDF to accurately mimic our RSS system.
To clarify, all inventory forecasts are done through an excel spreadsheet, while a system that looks like this is used for real-time monitoring. Again though, the formating on it's wrong and as it's only accessable through a browser portal you'd still have to either copy/paste it into a document then stitch it together to get something that looks like this. It's a bad reformating of a copied RSS window to boot.
This is all propaganda material, sent out from Apple and their ilk. Dont believe this garbage!!!!
as i said before, and JoelSnug as well, these are correct.
i know i'd rather buy the phone from BestBuy (no rebates ever), but i think most see "Sprint has the new Palm Pre," and go to the nearest Sprint store. how many ads/webpages do you see that involve BestBuy and the Pre? so far, BestBuy.com & wait, wait...Engadget.
to Boards of Canada
where is this list that is like this one? there isn't one, this was page by page capturing if you looked at the pdf
I called my local BBY store - they are only getting 4 Pre's. :(
This is a joke. I live in Vineland NJ as listed in the picture and 60k people live here and they dont get 1 phone? Unless the sprint stores are getting 99% of them this is a joke. You think they can afford to keep inventory scarce to build hype? Not with a new iphone coming very soon and other companies releasing phones in june too. Fail!!
I would presume that Sprint is taking advantage of their mail in rebate in some areas with larger populations. Don't take to much annoyance to it, they are just trying to be strategic.
A buddy of mine is Bestbuys sprint rep, he told me a few days ago our local store was landing 2. Sure enough, thats what this leak states as well, i'm going to say its legit.
So if the Pre is lacking video recording, mass email deleting, and voice dialing, where is the yelling and screaming from the Apple-haters? These very features were viciously attacked since "my X phone from X years ago has that feature already" so therefore the iPhone sucks. But wait, apparently now it's OK to trade some features for an overall better phone? Shocking how that works out.
Let's not even get into no Apps (at launch) or poor battery life. I mean, Apple was slammed for not opening up the iPhone right away (hence all the jailbreaking). But now, the Pre is announced and it's only where the iPhone was over 2 years ago. Come on people. You wanna talk Kool-aid? Stop drinknig the Apple-hating Kool-aid for once.
Greg, why are you such a downer. It's an awesome phone just be happy.