Summary
You know you have a real competitive fight brewing when you see prices drop down as low as they have.
Analysis
I believe the Palm Pre will give the iPhone a run for its money. To Apple’s credit it has created such excitement in the handset space that the smartphone has become a major hit.
What can I say except that over the next six months, we will see a major fight between the Palm pre and the iPhone. The winner will be the consumer.
I hope for Apple’s sake, AT&T Mobility has addressed the 3G network issues that have arisen. As for Palm, it needs to its storage capacity beyond 8GB.
Bottom line we are going to likely see a horse race over the next 6 months. Palm will need to reach that 1 million unit goal that seems to be so important to device manufacturers. In the next few weeks, Palm will likely make some announcements regarding the next gen Pre.
I just love it when the manufacturers go wild. The consumers and the carriers will benefit. Both manufacturers will need to keep an eye on costs while trying to generate revenue from current and new devices. It will be a balancing act for Palm and Apple.
Prices for the devices have come down as expected. At some point, both Apple and Palm will be in a pure price war. At some point all devices end up performing the same functions. The only way for Palm and Apple to avoid a price war is to continually innovate, which means more dollars spent on their parts - like I said a balancing act.
Right now there has been months’ worth of press about the Palm Pre. Sales figures will be released over the next few days. More than likely we will hear good news and news about shortages of Palm Pre devices. I still think the shortage was planned but that is okay because you got to leave your customers thinking the device is hot. Hey Apple has its built-in fan club so why shouldn’t Palm aggressively market. There will be over the next few days tons of press about the iPhone and most of it will look like Apple is catching up. The reality is the iPhone has real competition.
Good for the consumers.
