Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a limited time offer, and the handset is currently out of stock — you’ll have to wait a few days for delivery — but cutesy online phone retailer LetsTalk is offering the Pre for a mere $99 after a $100 rebate and a $100 instant discount. This sort of price flexibility bodes well for the truly budget conscious eying this phone, though as demonstrated time and time again: you’re saving a lot more in the long run with a cheap plan than a cheap phone, something that’s been a lock since day one with the Pre.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre drops to $99 at LetsTalk online store, for a limited time originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The stellar Palm Pre gave Sprint a desperately needed sales boost, but it wasn’t enough to stem the tide of customers leaving the troubled carrier. As eWEEK reports, Sprint lost another 300,000 customers in the second quarter, leaving Sprint with 48.8 million–and another $384 million net loss for the same time period.

On the plus side, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told investors that the Palm Pre was the most successful launch in Sprint’s history. He cited the extra training boost to Sprint employees and a possible softened impact from the iPhone 3GS launch on AT&T in June (which hit the market two days after the Pre did), according to the report.

“When there’s a new device launched, say the iPhone in particular, you’ll see a blip for a period of time, in increased churn,” said Hesse in the article.

Hesse also confirmed that Sprint retains an exclusive for the Pre “into 2010,” which of course could mean January 2nd.

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

Last week, fellow columnist Ross Rubin talked about the state of mobile platforms and how the era for launching new platforms has come to an end. I tend to take a different view of the mobile market. There are currently six major platforms vying for the hearts and minds of users and third party applications developers — RIM’s Blackberry, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Apple’s iPhone, Nokia’s s60, Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android — and there’s simply no way the market will support that many device ecosystems. But there may yet be opportunity for other players to enter the market.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the early 80s there were a multitude of personal computing platforms. Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, Apple and even Timex (yes, Timex) all were in the personal computing business, long before IBM entered the game. All survived for a period of time selling to an enthusiast market with a focus on out of the box featuresets. Once the target became the mass market, however, user expectations changed from the out of box experience (which essentially meant programming in Basic) to additional capabilities provided by third party software. The success or failure of each PC platform was decided in no small part by the availability of third party software. Exclusive titles, best of breed titles, and titles that appeared on a given platform first determined winners and losers. The same thing is happening today in the mobile space.

Continue reading Entelligence: Six is much too much

Entelligence: Six is much too much originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re doing our darnedest not to be recklessly optimistic here, but after weeks and weeks of nothing, a few new somethings have sauntered into Palm’s App Catalog. If you’ll recall, we actually heard earlier this month that said catalog was destined to get some serious additions in the near future, and we’re hoping that the surfacing of these two is a sign of things to come. Announced this morning over on Palm’s official blog, OpenTable and Fliq Bookmarks are now available to download on the Pre. The former allows hungry owners to secure themselves a spot at a nearby eatery, while the latter works with The Missing Sync for Palm Pre to transfer Safari bookmarks from your desktop (Mac for now, PC coming soon) to the Pre. Sure, it’s not like these two are the killer apps we’ve been longing for, but at this point, any progress is great progress.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Palm’s webOS gets a couple more apps — are the floodgates opening? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that Verizon wants the Pre; in fact, as much as we’re sure they’d like to be showing a corporate poker face, it’s pretty obvious they want it badly given how swiftly it sought to take the wind out of Sprint’s sails with comments around the time of the initial launch. Sprint’s Dan Hesse moved just as quickly to quash the thought as best he could by publicly slamming his company’s archrival, telling media that Verizon needed to cut it out with the assumptions that Sprint’s exclusivity period was six months and reiterating that he’d have the Pre in his back pocket through the end of 2009. The obvious response from Verizon? Revise your language just a little bit and keep at it. Big Red is now saying that it’ll have the Pre “early next year” in comments made during its earnings call today — in other words, the very moment Sprint’s exclusivity ends if Verizon has anything to say about it. From Palm’s perspective, sitting pretty atop the States’ largest carrier is a good place to be, so we’re sure they’re stoked to hear the depth of Verizon’s interest — not to mention that we’ve still got that Eos floating around somewhere.

[Via PreCentral]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Verizon reiterates it’ll have the Pre — early next year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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