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 June 8th 2009 10:43AM
And now its down.
So is pre the iphnekiller ?
why the hell does everything have to be a something killer? Why can't both co-exist and give serious competition to each other? I for one would hate it if there is no iPhone or Pre because they both look like excellent devices.
like Jacob just implied... there is no iPhone killer the Pre will crash and burn just like its screen
50k sounds reasonable. Looking at the app store, Pandora has been downloaded over 38k times already.
I don't know if they would have matched the iphone figures even if they had a 100k units out there. Still, 50k in a single weekend is very, very impressive. Congrats Palm, hope you guys stick around.
I don't know if they would have matched the iphone figures even if they had 100k units out there. Still, 50k in a single weekend is very, very impressive. Congrats Palm, hope you guys stick around.
From the inventory numbers we saw, it does look like they were supply-constrained. No clue how many they would have sold if they had adequate supply, but definitely sounds like a strong launch.
palm wants to focus on the future of the WebOS, not the sales of only one device, the Pre. There will be more WebOS devices on different carriers too. So don't count them out for having shortages and only selling 50,000.
Well done, Palm.
50,000 units is a hell of a lot of hardware to move in one weekend.
50,000 units is nothing to brag about. Clearly, it's not the iphone killer everyone is proclaiming it to be. Next ...
That's the same feeling we get when Apple fans brag about OSX only to have people choose Windows instead.
Guss Apple better pull OSX and just install Windows on their machines, and stop trying to push such a miserable failure, right?
Wow
That 50k should make a debt in iPhone sales
@hated
Go fuck yourself.
Considering that nobody has given a crap about when palm released a new phone for years, this is pretty good news for the company.
Everyone is obsessed with this stupid "iPod Killer" notion instead of being realistic. A company can exist selling their products to a user base without taking down the #1 product.
Hell, Apple makes great computers but they haven't been #1 in that market in a very long time but they still kept in business before the ipod/iphone thing took off.
I think that Sprint didn't want to advertise too heavy and some shit like the Crackberry Storm happen, with alot of consumers unhappy about the Pre. So they pushed it to the audience who actually pays attention to the specs and features of a phone before they buy them. Next after it proves successful, then they probably roll out new models and advertise on tv.
Sorry if someone already said this, I didn't feel like going through every comment.
Palm pre fanbois,??
Crickets
Nowhere to be found
Seems like they were all talk or blog
Agree ?
Only 50,000 sales?
Guess most people are too smart to buy another iPhone ripoff when they know a new model of the real thing is only a few days away.
Posted by Tres on another topic:
"I'm agnostic when it comes to my device/OS choices. I decide by the quality of the product/software not by the brand..."
Yeah sure.
That's why I chose an iPhone :)
Stalker much?
Get a life.
Look around you...are you just one of those angry teenagers or a bitter old person? Which is it? My god man...
Iphonelike hype they said,.
50,000 is so very noniphonelike.
COngrats Palm! As a Pre owner i LOVE IT! ALso, as a apple fanboy i love the phone. It is the iPhone rival. Sprint plan is awesome. Guess what we will be able to do SlingPlayer on EVDO. Att considers the iphone to be a computer and cap the data and no streaming. Pandora is super fast on the Pre. IM IN LOVE...and so are other apple fanboys with the Pre. In all honestly this is what i heard from them.."This is what the iPhone should of been"
Thanks Jon Rubinstein and for Apple engineers at Palm!!
The Pre was made by Palm engineers, not Apple engineers.
considering it's only 50k, that's $15million from the phones (minus actual rebates sent in, which is usually around 40%, so 2 million in rebates). provided they had 50k touchstones, that's another 3million, and we can probably add another million or two for other accessories (cases, car chargers etc). This also adds 50k $100/month plans for another $5 million per month for sprint.
Palm's market cap right now is 1.6 billion, so a haul of $20 million for the weekend means they added a 12.5% gain to the value of the company. Not bad for one weekend. And do we know if they're getting kickbacks on the plans like apple does with ATT? Something tells me they are but it just hasn't been leaked like it was with Apple. Palm's investors should be happy with this start for the new palm.
The comparisons of Palms (1.6 bill market cap) to apple (126billion market cap) are like comparing apples to oranges. Ya Palm couldn't have the stock Apple did, they're essentially 1/100th the size of apple. This was very successful.
Sprint adding $5million/month is a huge deal, so I'd consider it successful.
Oh, and I love my PRE!!!
Jonyah...you should NOT invest real money...you are throwing out sales numbers as if they are profit numbers...you think all the pre's are free to make? Did you take out taxes, admin, marketing and other costs?
Yikes...
Pending any hardware disasters and stock limitations in the next couple of weeks, I expect Palm to sell triple that by next weekend and a lot more in the weeks and months ahead. I have the iPhone 3G running OS 3.0 for a while .. but -to me- it feels more complete to have my gmail and mobile me accounts pushed to my device as well as calendar updates, weather updates, gtalk, stock market quotes and news/blogs sitting in front of me side by side just a card flip away.. getting updated constantly on my Pre.
Here's to hoping that Apple will "surprise" me even more as a consumer and a developer.. Competition is good!!!
I rather have a phone that last throughout the day than one that needs recharging at lunchtime.
I think your mom is calling you from upstairs. She made you lunch and wants you to come up from the basement.
It's funny how product launches are becoming similar to the opening weekend box-office for big budget Hollywood movies, in addition to word mouth week-over-week drops.
I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
Just to put my 2 cents in.
My cousin waited in line at like 5:30AM in Manhattan Beach and was 2nd in line. She got one but is really disappointed in hers because something's wrong with the battery. She says off a full charge, it lasted only 5 hours and all she did within those 5 hours was send one email. Sounds like something is defective. They said they'll figure it out or replace it though.
When she told me that the line wasn't too bad and that her store had 70, I decided to just go into a Sprint store whenever it was convenient to me just to see what was up.
I went into one in Orange County (in Southern California) around 2:30pm. It wasn't too busy. I asked the guy in the front if they had any Pres left and he said they were sold out all over Orange County already. He offered to put me on the waiting list, but I said it was ok. I'll just wait. He also said it'll probably only be a month or so before it's readily available. There was also a guy there with his girlfriend who wanted a Pre (pretty badly actually, he sounded very excited about it). The girlfriend was whining to him "but your iPhone is better!" He told her "no it's not." I thought that was pretty funny.
The Sprint guy at the store I went to also told me they didn't expect to sell out since they expected the Instinct to sell out and... well it didn't. I played with the demo units in the store though and I was impressed and not impressed. I wasn't impressed by the lag. It felt a little choppy, but I'm not sure if it's because the demo program kept on trying to run or what. But there were more hiccups/jumps when I was scrolling around than I expected. I'll still probably get it in a month (or whenever it becomes widely available).
@krische
dont feed the troll
This is a good figure, and presumably they could have sold a few more if they had them on hand. But remember that the iPhone cost twice as much as this device on the day it sold 150,000 copies. When the price was dropped by $200 sales went a lot higher, and they really took off when it went to $200 (subsidized). Palm won't be able to do these price drops, they're already in there.
I think that over a year, there will be a lot less than 1/3rd as mane Pres sold on Sprint in the US than iPhones sold on AT&T. Of course, Palm can go to other carriers, whereas Apple is locked into AT&T for 3+ years.
I'm willing to bet a lot of the lag was due to having several apps running. It's not obvious that each of those cards means that a chunk of resources is being tied up at first glance.
When I was giving the one in the store a test run the lag went away when I closed some cards.
The 50K are estimated numbers. Expect it to be lower when the data is fully audited.
According to the update, the estimate is increasing.
So... you know, maybe not.
Iphone sold more the first day than Palm..
The question is :WHO CARES?.
Palm Pre apparently is a nice product, instead the first iphone with the first firmware was all but troubles.
I don't see why people are saying 50,000 is not a big number. Not to mention that this is just an estimateeeee. Other analysts have said that it may have sold up to 200,000. The iPhone probably did sell more its opening weekend. So what? There were many more iPhones available at launch, Palm has unfortunately had manufacturing problems. What really matters for Palm right now is how many Pres were left over, and from all I've been reading on blogs and forums, the Pre sold out at pretty much every store where it was available. I tried visiting some stores just to try the Pre(I can't afford a new phone+cancellation of contract+new data plan right now), and every one of the 4 stores I visited had sold out. And this was like, the early afternoon. Imo, good job Palm! I'm interested in seeing what apple has up its sleeves today though. Too bad there aint no multi-tasking (non-jalbroken) iPhone anytime soon though =P
50,000 that's great to hear about 33% of the iPhone launch which is really good considering the economy is alot weaker than when the iPhone came out. There's a lot of potential buyers that are also taking the wait and see approach which is understandable. I bought one and the Web OS is amazing you really have to try it out to understand and appreciate.
I'm not a Palm fan, Apple fan, Blackberry fan, Sprint fan or Apple fan just someone who likes a good product that fits my needs. The reason so many of you get sooooo worked up over a phone mine you is because your a fan short for fanatic just like any fan of your fav sport team you live and die with them and think their the best even though their not.
So take off your fan caps and give props to all, at the end of the day they'll always be different phones for different folks depending on your individual needs. If you must be a huge fan then make it work for you and buy their stock, that's putting your money where your mouth is...
Let's not forget, that the "iPhone" name was originally conceived by Cisco... So no iPhone without Cisco, and so forth..
“I worked with Steve for many years and learned a tremendous amount from him, the value of user experience and design — taste. I also learned the idea of great marketing. … On the engineering side, I helped created the engineering culture at Apple so obviously, the engineering culture at Palm bears some similarities to it.”
Jon Rubinstein: Palm’s executive chairman and the person who was instrumental in the creation of the iPod and the iPhone. He also hired other Apple employees that worked on the iPod/iPhone. Saying the Pre was heavily influenced by the iPhone is putting it nicely.
Palm was started by ex Apple Newton employees btw, wink. wink.
"Palm was started by ex Apple Newton employees btw, wink. wink."
I call BS on this...Jeff Hawkins and Ed Colligan NEVER worked for Apple.
So, let me get this straight . . . Palm, considered dead company just 6-7 months ago, sells between 50,000-100,000 units opening weekend (that's 33-66% of what the iPhone took in) and you think that's a bad thing? The original iPhone was the most hyped and anticipated phone . . . well, ever. Let's not forget that the "Smartphone" market is seriously saturated at this point.
Did anyone else catch the Steve Schiller's dig at the Pre during WWDC? Let's see, by Apple's reasoning, the Pre has 18 times more apps than the iPhone did DURING ITS FIRST ENTIRE YEAR OF EXISTENCE. (18x0 is still 0, so I guess Palm really has infinite times more apps). How many do you think Palm will have one year from today? I think the folks at Apple are a little scared . . . just a little, though.
I would say, kudos to Palm. I think they have a real contender.
Everyone is quick to say that there would be no Pre without the iPhone, but fail to recognize that there would have been no iPhone without ITS predecessors - among them the Palm Pilot and Treo. I love Apple, use four Macs between work and home, but that doesn't mean I HAVE to buy an iPhone. They're doing great things, but so are other companies.