RSSDon't panic: Verizon will get Palm Pre, too
By Tim Conneally | Published May 29, 2009, 12:52 PM
The pairing of Sprint and Palm for the launch of the Pre was romantic. Don't laugh, you thought it too. Erstwhile smartphone leader Palm put its best hope for survival in the underdog wireless carrier who, without the Pre, has no ultra-competitive exclusive touchphone. Both companies have endured declining market share, and together they could take on the world and get some of it back.
Well that romance is over, and it ended a little more than a week before the Pre even hit consumer availability. Lowell McAdam, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless, yesterday announced that his company will offer the Pre "in the next six months."
This statement serves as a little insurance policy for Verizon, reminding customers that the exclusive relationship between Sprint and Palm is openly short term. From the beginning of the Pre's hype cycle, Palm CEO Ed Colligan has said that the device will be available on other carriers in 2010. While McAdam's announcement yesterday lacked any sort of specificity, it should keep Treo-wielding Verizonites from jumping ship to get first crack at the Pre in the next few weeks.
Further, McAdam noted that Verizon's exclusive BlackBerry Storm is expecting an update, and that Android-driven phones are coming "in the near future."
Unsurprisingly, the market responded strongly to McAdam's statements. Palm's stocks jumped 8% in value, and Sprint Nextel's dropped precipitously in early trading, only to climb back up in value this morning.
"Palm CEO Ed Colligan has said that the device will be available on other carriers in 2010".
Hmmm. Today is 01 June - 6 months away is 01 January. Where's the problem?
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|It's a friggin smartphone for chrisake! And very very late to the game to catch up with the flood of others. Plus its questionable if the company making it will make it through this year. Why is there such a hype around it? These things are almost commodity these days!
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|That's six months after the Pre's launch on Sprint lands on Verizon in December or so, just enough time for them to cripple the phone's best features and push it out before Valentine's Day.
Sounds pretty reasonable, no?
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|This is great news, and gives me renewed hope that Palm will survive. I won't jump off Verizon for any phone.
I even see that the Pre will have Activesync, but with multiple exchange accounts available! Makes me immediately want to jump off the WM bandwagon, since I need this functionality.
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|WM bandwagon?
If Windows Mobile is the bandwagon so many avid phone users are riding on, what's iPhone and Blackberry?
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|Rim and Apple are respectively #2 and #4 with WM being #3 and Symbian still #1 in smartphone market share.
And if you require a metric for the relative intelligence of iPhone users - it is proportional to the reviews of the iPhone Compass application indicating the general user aptitude...
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|Interesting. I read it precisely the other way -- a really bad development for Palm, since they're clearly counting on a big rollout for the phone, which is now undercut by all the people who are shrugging and saying "Oh, I can wait." If I were Palm's board of directors I'd seriously be considering visiting Mr. McAdam with a truncheon today.
(And I know, you're a Verizon guy, and I respect that. But Pre sure wouldn't be the first phone for which exclusivity forced switches. That Cupertino outfit's offering comes to mind.)
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