Amazon Offers Sizable Pre, Pixi Discounts

-Better/more comfortable keyboard
-"Candybar" formfactor--no slider to break/wobble
-Thinner/lighter and POSSIBLY slightly better battery life than Pre due to slower CPU and smaller, lower res. screen

That's IT. Otherwise, the Pre blows the Pixi away. If Palm could address the performance woes (unlikely), then the Pixi would be an attractive "free" or "30" phone. Otherwise, I see it as a short-lived stopgap device.

I still maintain that the Treo Pro was a superb piece of hardware kit (decent keyboard, nice battery capacity, microSD slot etc). Palm really needs to rework that design a bit to accomodate a 320x480 screen and introduce a proper next-gen Treo.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

I'll have to ask my preteen what she thinks of the Pixi - we were sitting together watching some DUHmb Nickelodeon show last night when - tada! - the Pixi ad showed up.

The Kidlet just came home from school and I put up the Youtube Pixi ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIxk14xysFg

let her watch it, and asked what she thought.

She said (semi-paraphrase - but totally unprompted):

== "The background was kinda confusing but they did show you what the
== phone could do"

I asked:

== "Oh? What could the phone do?"

and she replied:

== "I can't really remember".

and I asked:

== "Would you buy the phone?"

and she replied:

== "No, because even though it showed what the phone could do, it went by
== so fast that you can't remember anything; you would have to look online"

It seems like a bad idea to cut the price so low on the Pre that people will start seeing Pres as a cut-rate brand. I'm surprised that Palm isn't following the Apple model on this--keep the price points the same and add incremental bumps in features to justify the price. In Apple's case it means their stuff is often priced above market, but you really can't wait for a big sale because you know that none is coming.

Palm sold a boatload of Pres and Pixis to Sprint. =I= can guess that those FIRST sales made Palm a boatload of unsubsidized bucks. We do NOT know, however, if Palm will be able to sell Pres and Pixis both to Sprint again (followon sales) and to other carriers at the same price - I personally would doubt that they can.

Are the CURRENT discounts partially subsidized by Palm? Hmmm...maybe. But they EASILY could be partially subsidized by Sprint (since Sprint is the distributor - remember, all these venues got their devices from Sprint, not Palm (thus they're already counted as sell-through before they sell them to the end-consumer! Different thread...)).

When Palm discusses "gross margins" for this quarter or maybe next we'll get a small inkling about where those subsidies are coming from. A quarter or two ago (on the launch of the Pre) Palm actually had gross margins that were about half what they wanted (16% rather than 30% - if an unexpected purchase of already-discounted devices (800s?) had not taken place). Palm's device mix at the time was legacy phones like Centro and the first batch of Pres. That gross margin screamed out "subsidies from Palm! Or dramatic price drops (same thing)!".

Let's see ANY phone manufacturer introduce new devices above $150 ever again.

Price wars are fun.

But...oooooooohhhhh...those MARGINS!

It is really hard to see palm sticking around for much longer when you look at the competition. So sad to think about what they could have been.

I for one am with Alltel, now verizon which is currently offering zero phones from Palm. That is zero with a big 0. Not even the lowly centro or the Treo Pro is offered. How could Palm let that happen. I guess for that matter no one but Sprint is offering any of their phones.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's ownership of the enterprise market has just been challenged.

Deutsche Bank on Monday released a report saying that Apple's iPhone is gaining acceptance among IT departments and is on track to make gains in enterprise usage, likely at the expense of RIM's popular smart phone.

"We expect it (iPhone) to gain considerable share in the enterprise over the next several years, possibly driving upside to our unit estimates," Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore wrote in a report.

Those gains would likely put a dent in sales of of RIM- and Windows-based phones in corporations. RIM, the report said, has over 60 percent of the enterprise market for smart phones while Microsoft has over 20 percent.

Shares of RIM plummeted $4.24, or 7 percent, at $54.50 in afternoon trading.

Deutsche Bank said it expects to see about 2 million iPhones in the enterprise market for 2009, taking roughly 7 percent of the corporate smart phone market. The analyst firm says that's up from 2 percent of the market in 2008 for Apple. What's driving the increase, in part, is the belief that it is not true that physical keyboards are a necessity in corporate use.

Also, the analyst report said Apple's enormous gains in the apps market show the "accelerating utility of the platform." Microsoft and RIM, on the other hand, are "years behind Apple" and are losing out in developer support and application development.

Deutsche Bank, which makes a market in Apple securities, reiterated its "buy" rating and $250 price target on Apple. Apple shares edged upward $0.71 to $189.21 in late trading.

http://www.redherring.com/Home/26217

Essentially, says that Pre has the best messaging system currently available (IMO, true), and that the currently bare-bones implementation of Palm Profiles will make for an excellent IT management tool.

webOS is first-gen, and the Pre and the Pixi are first-gen hardware. They were never gonna be perfect right outta the gate. Nothing is.

The best software won't help if the crowd is moving in the other direction.

I do agree that the enterprise market has been abandoned. That's why I'm now looking at another platform. High powered feature phones do not interest me, especially with cheap hardware.
Pat Horne

Sheesh.

Glad I logged into only *one* thing.

You are sooooo sad.

Gary
Tech Center Labs

1. are you keeping the Droid?
2. will you buy an iPhone in June 2010 if it comes to VZW?

abosco wrote:
What is the utility of Twitter?

People in the media love it because it fits their style. Sensationalized headline, no content, no research, and nobody actually listening. Thus, it sounds like everybody is using it. But nobody actually is.

Heh. Too true.

I did find one new use for it recently, though - virtual TV-watching buddies. There's a political panel show I like to zone out on Sunday mornings( Insiders - http://tinyurl.com/c9o73m). Did a Twitter hashtag search, and lo and behold, came across a sizeable group of fellow politco-nerds hurling virtual abuse at the panellists. The show's much more fun now I've got others to watch it with...