Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Jun. 9, 2009

The Palm Pre’s introduction over the weekend was pretty much low-key, with few mobile devices actually in stock and available at some stores.

The Pre and its Web-OS (operating system) has been seen as a make-or-break product for Palm, which fell out of favor after once dominating the portable computing market with the Palm Pilot.

Later, it did somewhat gather a small fan base with the Treo.

Some observers visited five Sprint and three Radio Shack/Best Buy locations in the early hours of Saturday’s launch and interviewed many people in line or after buying a Pre.

The limited inventory generally resulted in out-of-stock signs early before noon. About 70 percent of those surveyed were existing Sprint customers and about 40 percent were Palm users.

At a Best Buy store in Portland, Oregon, the Pre was sold out Saturday, and a store associate advised that all Best Buys had only about two and, at the most, eight units for sale.

A waiting list at one store had eight names on it by Sunday morning.

Last week at a launch party in New York, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said the Pre release was a coming out party for Sprint (of some sort) which is a different company now than it was 12 months ago.

The wireless carrier has been touting improvements in customer service and network performance.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: WNA.