palmOne Raises Unlocked Treo 650 Price
Late last week palmOne was offering a unlocked (non carrier specific) GSM Treo 650 smartphone for $599. Then on thursday the price was quietly upped by $100, due to an online pricing error.
According to TreoCentral, the initial $599 pricing was a mistake. It was made available around the same day as the Cingular Treo 650 announcement and was not much more than a GSM model with a service plan.
palmOne spokesperson Marelen Somsak explained that the pricing on the palmOne store was indeed a mistake and the price for an unlocked Treo 650 will remain at $699.
Thanks to Michael at Nexave for the tip.
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Act of Corporate Greed
Anyway, I was only hoping that the Samsung SCHi550 would've been pushed so that palmOne would have some competition in the Smartphone Market. I don't know why the cancellation of the SCH-i550 would be so....
Powered by Palm OS since March 2002
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
Well, duh.
PalmOne's mission is not to deliver smartphones at the lowest possible price. Their mission is to maximise their profits. At $700, they'll lose customers, but gain profit per sale. Their bean counters have obviously told them that they'll increase their net profits this way.
Welcome to the market economy.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
ryan - can you at least change "mess" to at least "screw" in my edited post above? Granted I should have used the f word but your PG-13 edit killed my emphasis. thanks.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
* Having to port a phone number from a Treo-Incompatible Carrier to a Treo 650-approved carrier. If a customer is in a contract, then the process can become disasterous--Early Termination Fees will arise from the hassle of number portability if a customer is still in a contract. Full of bull.
* Customers might show loyalty towards a particular brand, but might not want to leave the carrier for any reason. A GSM/GPRS customer loyal to T-Mobile might want to deploy a Treo 650 for use with T-Mobile Networks, but does not want to pay big bucks, which can be a total turn-off.
* Know the Demand/Supply Theory. At higher prices, companies can make more with more profit but the demand will go down. At lower prices, companies have to make less but the customers want more. I'm not sure if the rather pricey MSRP of $700 for an unlocked GSM/GPRS Phone is palmOne's equilibrium.
I think palmOne wants to tell us that the best, most affordable way is to (COUGH) get a new plan with either Sprint or Cingular with a 2-Year Contract. This makes me want to yawn here.
How about an unlocked CDMA Model of the Treo 600 and/or Treo 650? Why does palmOne has to leave the CDMA Market on the dark by not offering an unlocked CDMA Treo 600/650?
Powered by Palm OS since March 2002
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
Here's an idea, PalmOne: Raise the price er...um.. I mean "correct the misprint" to have the price at $13,000.00 for the unlocked Treo 650. Hey - you'll be lucky if you sell only one, but the beancounters over there will be happy with the net profit on that one sale!!
Maybe that will let the beancounters loosen up their rears enough to trust that people might buy these dogs - locked or unlocked - even if you spend another five bucks or so to put a decent amount of RAM in them... ..but I digress..
Might have made more sense to DROP the price of the locked phone by $100 to encourage sales, but I guess that's the wrong answer. $700 bucks for a cell phone/Palm, oh sure.... money's no object, my Enron stock is soaring!!!
Us sheep will pay anything for whatever PalmOne puts out - no matter how lousy or underpowered it is, right? Sooner or later we'll wise up, but at the moment there's nowhere else to go for a decent smartphone with the PalmOS. And they know it.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
If the Treo 650 was $200, people would be whining and bitching that it was not free.
If the Treo 650 was $900, people would be whining and bitching that it was not $700.
People will always want a cheaper price, no matter what price is proposed. That doesn't mean that they know anything worth a damn about economics, or that their opinion is worth anything as a result.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
Price is merely what the buyer is willing to pay and what the seller is willing to accept. The beauty of the free market is that companies can charge whatever they like - and customers can accept it or balk a it. But as I've said before, attempt to screw the customer at your own peril. Palm's day of reckoning is at hand.
And to all the APOLOGISTS who keep bending over to willingly take it from behind from Palm, when Palm goes bankrupt - don't ask 'why? how could that happen?' and don't blame the evil MSFT/DELL/HP/Nokia - just remember the many of Palm's bonehead moves like this (and the T5, and Cobalt, etc.)
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
Pointless. In general in the CDMA realm, besides the service provider lock, the provider won't register foreign ESN's. Meaning they have all ESN's of their branded handsets (and those of their roaming partners) in a database. Attempts to connect for other than 911 calls will simply get you on hold for customer service. Plus you'd still have know how to update the PRL on a CDMA to make it useful on the new CDMA network.
CDMA is a much more closed world than GSM, and locking/unlocking is mostly moot.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
OK; I'm willing to pay at most $450 for an unlocked 650, given the alternative phones and plans that are out there. And I'm only willing to pay that premium because I depend on Palm applications. In all other respects, something like the Danger Hiptop is a better device at a far lower price ($200). I hope that clears it up.
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
If you were Sprint (or whoever) why would you mess with creating packages to sell the phone if everyone could bypass your store and get it direct from Palm for the same money?
I think a printing error, not 'corporate greed.'
RE: Act of Corporate Greed
If Gekko truly believed that Palm is doomed, Gekko would purchase a superior handheld and start participating in the internet forums for that superior handheld.
Gekko wouldn't waste another minute participating in the internet forums for doomed handhelds.
Ask yourself, "What is Gekko's motivation to continue participating in this forum if he believes that Palm is doomed?"
I pity the fool...
Thanks for sharing, Mr. T.
******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
Maybe not greed, but still a serious buzz kill. -retraction
P1 still dissapoints me greatly, but now I'd like to say that it's because they keep screwing something up as opposed to them simply being greedy.
I've read and heard some other points of view on this, and don't want to be thought of as a troll, but more of an outspoken geeky type, which is more accurate. :D
Crazy price
Even if you argue the whole "unlocked=$100+" into it, you still come up with a price closer to $500.
I'll be sticking with my 600 for a lot longer it seems.
The deals that make this phone worthwhile are only for new customers. But with number portability now, I think carriers need to start giving some love to existing customers. Carriers no longer hold your number hostage, which I know kept me with sprint for 2 years longer than I wanted.
So what's to say you'll be staying with them when your contract ends?
The 650 should be $500 w/no contract. Tops.
RE: Crazy price
No, as I posted above, the 650 should be the highest goddamn price that PalmOne can get away with under market conditions. Now, the 650 is too new to tell whether people will buy it at $700. But if it's too expensive, let PalmOne suffer. It's their choice to make, as much as yours.
Ambitious Treo 650 pricing by Palm
Crude, but true.
pa1mOne is playing a high stakes poker match, gambling the company's entire future. Just one problem: they aren't holding any cards and the market is about to call their bluff.
What would happen if, say Samsung or Sony Ericsson released a killer PalmOS smartphone and sold it for $450 without contract? Pretend 30% of potential Treo 650 customers bought this theoretical Samsung or Sony Ericsson. Things would get ugly pretty fast for pa1mOne. Unwanted inventory. Flatlining sales. Shrinking marketshare. Wait a minute - that's already happening...
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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
Honoring the price?
No Big Deal
Will they lose sales? Yeah, maybe a handful. Big deal.
Perspective?
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$700 Treo?
I guess they have to pay for Bradley's Golden Parachute somehow.