Palm Pixi now $50 on Sprint

Likely a direct counterstrike to Verizon's $79.99 Pixi Plus, Sprint has dropped the retail price of its original WiFi-less Pixi all the way down to $49.99 after $100 mail-in rebate on a new two-year contract. As you might recall, the Pixi debuted at $100, but now that the Pre's leaving it in the dust with both high-quality gaming and Flash support, a little more price separation between the two makes a lot of sense. Alright, Sprint, strong work -- now you've just got to drop the Pre a few bucks to distance it from Verizon's Pre Plus and you'll be good to go.

[Canterrain Posted Feb 27th 2010 10:03PM]

Erm.. or you could buy it at Radio Shack for like 30 bucks and no mail-in rebates?

[Stanley Posted Feb 27th 2010 11:08PM]

Tick. Tock. The sound of the Palm Bankruptcy Clock.

5 minutes to midnight.

[MosesusedaniPad Posted Feb 27th 2010 11:21PM]

@Stanley

How the hell is Palm going to make any profit from selling a $349 phone for $50 unless the Pixi only cost $40 to make? Palm is definitely perched on the edge of ruination. The Pixi seems like a nice little device for $50, though.

[mogren Posted Feb 28th 2010 12:10AM]

@MosesusedaniPad Cell phones 101: Palm sells the devices to the carrier at an undisclosed price, the carrier sells it to the consumer for whatever they want and subsidizes the cost of it by locking users into long term contracts.

[mhunterjr Posted Feb 28th 2010 12:15AM]

@MosesusedaniPad palm isn't selling it at that price. Palm sets the recommended retail value, then sells the phone to carriers and retailers at whole sale price. The carries offset the fact that their selling the phone below it's value by locking customers into 2yr agreements.

[pika2000 Posted Feb 28th 2010 2:21AM]

Mail-in rebate? In 2010?

[Tangerinescream Posted Feb 28th 2010 10:33AM]

You couldn't give me this phone for free. I agree with the other. iPhone 3g 99$. Best deal. If your going to have a phone IT should be a pleasant experience. I hate garbage phones.

[VIRGINA Posted Feb 28th 2010 1:52PM]

@Tangerinescream
You ever do the math on an iPhone 2 year contract?

[eon4220 Posted Feb 28th 2010 12:33PM]

Too bad, Sprint won't allow the pre or pixie on "SERO". They can Shove it.

[2late2die Posted Feb 28th 2010 1:44PM]

Why are they delaying the inevitable - we all know it's going to be free with contract in a matter of months if not weeks. Might as well do it now and watch the customers flow. Well okay, probably not that many customers but still more than now.

Anyway, I think the only way Palm is going to survive is if they do something big within 6 (or, even better, less) months. I'm talking new hardware - something unique and different from Pre or Pixi, big bump in software - something like at least 1.6 with buttload of new goodies, and most importantly an announcement of a large surge of developers and apps to their app store. Without these things I just don't see how Palm can survive. iPhone is still going strong; Android is just steamrolling through everyone - updates come fast and hard, it's already superior to iPhone OS in terms of pure capability for "regular" Android, and in terms of UI for the Sense UI Android; and WinP7s is coming out for holidays and I expect it'll be pretty big and pretty successful. So that's a lot of stuff for Palm to compete with.

[Joshua Przygocki Posted Feb 28th 2010 9:40PM]

Needs an Engadget Editor's Review...