We've yet to see Palm or Sprint confirm these numbers, but a quote from JPMorgan found in a
Wall Street Journal roundup this morning asserts that "sales [of the Pre] in the first two days probably exceeded 50,000." The report continues by mentioning that said figure was "aligned with expectations, but probably fell short of the
146,000 reported first-gen iPhone sales" during its opening weekend due to "capacity constraints in manufacturing." By and large, most analysts are deeming the
Pre launch a success, though it's hard to say whether the suits at Palm and Sprint agree or disagree. No matter how you slice it, 50,000 units in a single weekend ain't nothing to scoff at, but we'd say
next weekend's sales could be even more telling. You know, if anything goes down
today at 1:00PM ET.
[Via
ZDNet]
Update: A new
WSJ report now says analyst ranges are between
50,000 and 100,000. Heck, maybe Palm sold eleventy billion.
posted Jun 8th 2009 10:43AM
I think I'll wait a few months for the first-batch F-ups to calm over before considering this.
$29.99 a month for unlimited data and SMS from www.sprintrelaystore.com would be awfully nice.
is that place legit? I've never heard of a data-only plan... It says "© 2008 Sprint Nextel. All rights reserved." at the bottom though so I guess it has to be legit.
Sprint Relay Data Only Plan: $29.99* per month!
* Unlimited e-Mail
* Unlimited Internet Access
* Unlimited Instant Messaging (IM)
* Unlimited Domestic Text Messaging (SMS) (Included! Save $15)
* Phone as Modem, up to 5GB per month in total or up to 300MB per month while off-network roaming (PAM) (Included! Save $15)
* Incoming call will be blocked. When making the outgoing phone calls, you will be billed at $0.20 per minute for local voice calls or $0.40 per minute for long distance voice calls. The incoming call block can be removed by contacting our video customer service. If the incoming call block is removed, you will be billed at the same rate as the outgoing phone calls.
Phone as modem.... LOL. Not on the Pre!
50,000 is an awful lot, considering the Pre and the Sprint service are both garbage.
50,000. Wow. 50,000 complete morons just bought a shitty phone when they could have gotten the top of the line service-AT&T and the best phone on the market- the iPhone.
Some people are such morons.
50,000 is insufficient for Palm's needs.
what exactly is sprint relay? Im looking at the website, but i dont see anything that says how/why it is different from sprint, itself.
From what I've read on the message board sprint relay plans are meant for the deaf. Sprint has limited relay plans on the pre to only those who already have a relay plan. They originally weren't going to allow them at all but outrage from the deaf community forced them to reconsider.
Eleventy billion, LOL. HTC Touch Pro 2 FTW!
Had to get your apple comment in there, didn't you. I need to quit reading this site, I want real news, not biased fanboy crap.
The Pre wouldn't exist without the iPhone, so I think it's reasonable to compare the two.
while i agree with you that there is too much fanboisim around here in general, the announcement at lunchtime today could infact have a positive impact on sales of the pre this weekend since theres a good possibility that there will be no earthshattering news comming out of WWDC today.
Comparing the two isn't my problem, this is my problem "but we'd say next weekend's sales could be even more telling. You know, if anything goes down today at 1:00PM ET."
After reposting their 10 billionth reminder of wwdc and little comments like that, this website is way to biased. No wonder you love it here, paul, we all know you dream of humping steve at night. Comparing the two is what I want, I want people to be able to actually choose which product they want based on what they like. Not have crap like that shoved down their throat.
For once, I agree with Paul. See Paul? It makes you sound so much nicer when you don't spout fanboy crap.
Gotta give credit where credit is due.
yeah sorry Paul a Chapel, but you don't know what would exist without the iPhone. You might as well speculate what would happen if there was no Roman empire.
why do you trolls have such a problem with Engadget comparing like products?
If palm didn't want their device compared to the iPhone they should have been original about their product! If you don't like the way Engadget does things then stop visiting the site. I bid you ado.
lovely! such hatred for non Apple devices...
Trelane, General, retired
"The Pre wouldn't exist without the iPhone, so I think it's reasonable to compare the two."
let's see you back this stupid comment up.
Wake up. This is not a news site. It is a blog. Like all blogs, it is the reader's responsibility to verify what they read and access the information provided.
Endgadget is not a news sight. It doesn't have to hold itself to any kind of journalistic standard.
I'll admit this probably isn't the best place to post that, this article isn't the worst biased story I've seen here. I'm just sick of constant iphone fanboyism and wwdc reminders. It actually makes me want to sell my iPhone so I don't have to feel like such a tool when I pull it out of my pocket. Engadget comment system sucks more than anything and I couldn't post on the wwdc story so I got all my anger out here.
@Jacob
Right, because a bunch of programmers and engineers were sitting around PALM headquarters going, "You know what would be really cool on a phone? Multi-touch and a real browser and full touch screen phone with no buttons. We'll have to kill our old OS to implement such things, but I think it's a great idea. And what's even better, no one has ever done this before! It'll be a hit!"
Right. I'm sure that conversation happened. If the Pre had been announced a couple of months after the original iPhone, maybe.
Yeah, you probably should stop reading this site, since you still don't get, that this ain't fanboyism! I mean, do you disagree, that the selling numbers will depend on what Apple is gonna announce? Because I don't. And I'm glad they mentioned the WWDC, because I didn't immediately think of it affecting the pre's selling numbers.
Gizmodo is one website away idiot...
Seriously all of you bitch and moan about how Engadget is apparently hurting you with all these "horrible apple stories" yet you idiots day in and day out come in them and post.
NEWFLASH!!!!1
NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO READ ENGADGET. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE ENGADGET THEN STOP READING IT. GO TO ANOTHER OF THE MILLION TECH WEBSITES OUT THERE.
/rant
Anyways this is Palm's fault. IF they had produced enough Pre's who knows how much they would have sold. As it is though I think the launch could have been significantly better. There was ZERO advertising on TV for this phone. I MEAN ZERO. The only ads I saw were online...
That in itself is a disgrace.
Paul, tell me, have you seen this alternate universe?
Ya'll are stricken by a case of severe reverse fanboysim. If it has the word "iPhone" in it they are sucking Apple's cock, right? Well... the fact of the matter is the iPhone is the Pre's biggest competitor and you don't hear about lines for a Blackjack or Motorola Q or any of those devices moving 50k units in a weekend so it's the most reasonable thing to compare it to. You guys are worse than Apple fanboys, the anti-fanboys who just like to be angry, contrarian, and most of all, illogical.
@Jacob
Yes, I've seen it.
Paul, the iPhone was unique because it was the first mainstream device that really tried to ram a lot of innovation home to the average joe. but that was three years ago. It's called competition. There's probably someone in vegas putting money on the fact that more than half of the WWDC keynote today was thrown together in the past week or so based on what the PRE does. Why not? Let someone else take the first innovative steps then tear down their device, read Engadget comment threads about how people are bitching about some of the things that havent been fixed yet and improve the idea make it their own and sell it. The world is better for it. Even though products like the Zune will never have great success, the world needs them, and ditch diggers too.
complain about the Iphone and Apple you want, but it's what gets the most people to read these type of sites.
You know whats just great? The fact that fanboi Paul A "Douchebag for sure" Chapel, doesn't even own an iphone.
most of the team that worked on the pre came from apple,
so YES ,
you can and should compare what ex-apple employees invent to their old company.
Seriously, why can't the anti-Apple people see the truth for what is it. This carnation of the Pre would not be possible WITHOUT Apple. The VAST majority(the people that matter anyway) of the Pre team was from Apple, starting with Jon Rubinstein,
@Jay Voorhees
All great points, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with my original comment. My original comment was:
"The Pre wouldn't exist without the iPhone, so I think it's reasonable to compare the two."
That comment didn't imply anything about competition. I was making a simple observation, which justified the idea that it's okay for Engadget to mention the iPhone, since the Pre was an obvious imitation of the iPhone. It doesn't help shaunisadirty's argument when representatives of PALM actually compared the Pre to the iPhone and said that iPhone users were going to buy the Pre after finishing out their AT&T contracts.
I have to disagree with Paul.
Palm announced they were working on a brand new Linux based OS at some point in late 2005, so the Pre would have existed with or without the iPhone. HOW the OS would have looked is a whole different story, but not the point.
And the iPhone wouldn't exist without phones like the Neonode - so what?
@ alan stangis
"it's a pre jim, but not as we know it"
that would have been your pre (alien)
but for the ex- apple team that made the pre what it is today,user friendly, just like apple,
Wow, big surprise, the Apple Haters are disagreeing with me, even though Roger McNamee said:
"June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it — if you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy."
He also said that the Pre "eats iPhone for breakfast" in his little mock video.
So, in other words, the Haters argument is:
Engadget compares Pre to iPhone = BAD
PALM representative compares Pre to iPhone = GOOD
@Swineflu
true that, "fanboys" on both sides secretly love this ;)
No, Paul....just...................no.
Engadget compares Pre to iPhone = inevitable but often unnecessary.
PALM compares Pre to iPhone = inevitable and unfortunately necessary.....but no one has EVER said it was "good".
Likewise your view seems to be
Anyone that has a criticism of Apple = "Hater"
Anyone that feels Apple can do no wrong = "objective"
As always, reality finds itself in moderation.
Neither you....nor Engadget find itself in that happy medium without fail. Though to Engadget's credit...they at least TRY.
"The Pre wouldn't exist without the iPhone, so I think it's reasonable to compare the two."
This boy is actually right for once. Without the iPhone we probably wouldn't have things like the Touch HD and Omnia HD either. I'm not saying this is any kind of evolution on the side of Apple, they just pushed the market forward.
Yes, you can say that pre wouldnt exist without iphone, buyt in the same breath you will have to say that iphone wouldnt exist without Sony Ericksson P800 or Nokia 7710 or the multitude of touchphones predating iphone.
Got to love all the Pre fans getting pissed over dismal results. Sounds like of the 50,000 phones (estimate of course) a good portion of them will need to be fixed due to the litany of issues with the phones (light leakage, etc.).
As for you that are "sick" of the WWDC announcements, there were 2 - 3 posts per day about the friggin Pre for the past few weeks, thank god that ship has sailed and will be gone for good in a few months...
I can't agree with you there Paul to some extent. There are things that Palm invented further back that other phones have implemented and vice versa so it's not easy to say what would or would not have been created. I agree more with Alan, how the OS looks etc perhaps but complete non existence I highly doubt.
I could really care less about who did what. It's competition and that's what we the consumers need. So far I love my Pre, if the iPhone would have been on Sprint I probably would've already had one. To each his own. Hopefully we'll continue to see companies driving their competition to do bigger and better things.
@Cheddar, your comments shock me. You're saying moving 50,000 phones with contracts in two days is dismal? That's like saying to mcdonalds, its pretty pathectic that you only sold 100,000 billion french fries this past weekend, you giant fail whale ronald.
@Paul, I understand what you said, but if engadget is going to mention the iPhone in every post about the PRE, then mention the PRE in every iPhone post, if we're trying to be unbiased and all.
Get over yourself. It's a fucking editorial site. They can post whatever they want. Don't like it, go somewhere else or start your own site.
I'm excited to hear about the pre. I'm not excited to hear some whiney commenter piss and moan about word choice in the article.
What I dont get is that Palm has still not opened up their Dev Kit. Although I am not getting the phone since I am on another contract, I do want the Dev kit and want to make some apps for fun.
Agreed, this would be a easier to buy if I could write apps for it... I am still on the fence.
I had talked to a Sprint store manager yesterday, and he said that Palm had just released the SDK to a lot of developers only a few weeks ago. I guess one of his employees is a programmer and got the SDK a couple weeks ago and has started making apps with it. The timeline sounds right since it was a few weeks ago when we saw the videos of the emulator show up on youtube.
I remember sorta the same news when the Instinct came out and that phone was on Sprint too. So it's too early to tell what's going to happen.
I didn't know there were 50,000 people on Sprint to start with!
post of the day.
Sprint actually has 50,000,000 customers... but the Palm Pre is unlikely to be a must-needed device for most people.
When Apple came out with their first phone... people sorta had an idea what to expect because they probably already had an iPod, or at least heard of one.
Existing Palm Treo or Centro users will probably jump on the Palm Pre real quick... and techie people who read Engadget.
But I don't see the Palm Pre gaining mass appeal and marketshare.