Hasta La Gadget!

We’d ventured a guess that the Pre would run close to $500 off-contract, and it looks like we were in the ballpark — Sprint customer service is apparently telling people that Palm’s first WebOS device will run $549 without a two-year commitment. That’s just off-contract, not unlocked, mind you, so don’t get any ideas about throwing this thing on Verizon. We’re guessing most people will sign the papers on June 6th and pay $199 after rebate, so don’t get too worked up — just know that living a life free of attachment and responsibility will cost you $549 upfront.

[Thanks, Dustin]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre to run $549 off-contract originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Palm Pre is officially $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Meaning it’s really $299 for a lot of people. Here’s the deal:

The $100 mail-in rebate scheme is clever, if slightly devious—it’d apparently cost more than Sprint wants to spend to subsidize every single Pre down to $199, and this way, they’re only doing it for the customers who care so much about the price that they actually follow through with tedious rebate process. Which is likely about half. University of Toronto Marketing Professor Sridhar Moorthy says a 50 percent redemption rate is “the maximum figure I’ve seen.” A $100 mail-in TiVo rebate in 2004 saw slightly worse better numbers.

So Sprint’s likely charging half of the people who buy the Pre $299—the people willing to pay that much, or at least not so unwilling that they make the effort to send off the rebate with all t’s crossed and i’s dotted. Those people, in effect, are subsidizing the phones for people only willing to pay $199. And Sprint still gets to say it’s $199, since saying anything higher would be suicide.

I want to be madder about it—Sprint is effectively leaning on its customers’ natural human propensity for failure to complete a super annoying, time-consuming task in order to prop up something of a lie—but a company who just lost $594 million doesn’t have AT&T-style cash to provide the kind of bankroll they’d have to drop if the Pre is the hit they’re praying it will be.

Update As a point of comparison, a Sprint rep told Giz reader Dustin that the unsubsidized price of the Pre is $549 (which jibes with this fine print on the Pre’s value). The unsubsidized price of the 8GB iPhone 3G is $599. If you figure that the rebate redemption rate is going to be 50 percent, that puts Sprint’s average take per phone at around $249, so they’re aiming for a $300 subsidy per phone, while AT&T’s shelling out $400 per phone.

Judging by AT&T’s average $95-per-iPhone monthly revenue—1.6x the amount of cash an average customer forks over monthly—the Pre will be very good to Sprint’s coffers over the long term if it’s successful, since most customers will likely opt for Sprint’s Simply Everything Plan, which is $100 a month. But saving that $100 on every other phone can’t hurt.

The Pre is far from the only phone where mail-in rebates are a part of the gambit. But it’s still kinda lousy. On the other hand, this opens Sprint up to protests from Rush Limbaugh that they’re practicing socialist re-distribution by letting their wealthier Pre customers pay for their less fortunate customers, so maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world. Just remember your damn rebates people. [Hat Tip AllThingsD]

Palm has stopped teasing us and finally announced a date for the launch of the Pre. The handset will go on sale on Saturday June 6th for $300, just two days before Apple’s WWDC, where many are expecting the announcement of a new iPhone.

And it looks like Palm has already messed up. The headlines, including the big splash page at Palm’s own Pre site, shout $200 as the price, and that’s the price that most other bloggers are quoting this morning. But reading a little further shows that this price is based on a $100 mail-in rebate, which means you could (and probably will) be waiting months to get the check. So we think it’s wiser to consider the price to be $300, and then be pleasantly surprised if and when the rebate check actually shows up.

Whichever price you choose to embrace, it is based on a two-year contract with Sprint. The Sprint Press release says that you’ll need to sign up for either the “Everything Data plan” ($70 or $90, depending on which it is) or the “Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan” ($70 and up, depending on minutes).

We also have details for the accessories. The Touchstone charger will be an extra $70, a car-charger into which you can slide the supplied USB charging cable will be $30 and a pair of leather cases have been shown but are as yet un-priced.

The timing is very interesting. Palm could either scoop an Apple announcement at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts June 8 (and remember, it will most likely be an announcement — last year we had to wait a couple weeks until the iPhone 3G actually shipped) or it could burn bright for a short weekend until being extinguished by the fire-hose of iPhone news.

Product page [Palm]

Press release [Sprint]

See Also:

Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre

NYTimes: Palm Pre Due First Week of June

Sprint has formally announced that the Palm Pre will be available on June 6th for $199.99 on a two-year contract, after rebates. Interestingly, that’s two days before Apple’s next big event and probable product launch.

Also announced were the stores that’d be carrying it: far from a Sprint Store exclusive, the Pre will be sold in Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart from launch day (a Saturday, oddly enough). You’ll have to opt for an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan (both of which start at $70) to get one, and you’ll have to send off a $100 mail-in rebate to knock the price down to the advertised $200, but otherwise, no surprises here.

Update: From Palm’s Twitter feed:

@marek_k: @palm_inc Any international release dates yet? (Europe) [Not yet]

In case the presence of Tweetspeak caused you to instinctively look away, that just means that they haven’t made any announcements for availability outside the US, but that they probably will, eventually. [Press Release]

Sprint to Offer Palm Pre Nationwide on June 6

Digital-age-defining Palm webOS phone is built for consumers and businesses alike, powered by America’s most dependable nationwide 3G network, with the best price plan value

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm® Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Running on the new Palm webOS™ mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.(1)

For those who juggle life circa 2009 – bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard. Before Pre, you had to compromise when selecting a wireless phone. To get the business features you needed, you had to sacrifice the personal entertainment features you wanted. Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly.

“The argument that you need one phone for work and another phone for play, or that you have to make compromises between business and lifestyle productivity, is over,” said Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint. “With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”

Palm Pre will run on America’s most dependable 3G network and come with Sprint’s industry-leading, value-oriented Everything Data plans that offer savings of up to $1,430 over two years vs. comparable AT&T and Verizon plans for smartphones and PDAs.(2)

“The Palm Pre takes full advantage of Sprint’s Everything Data plans,” said Avi Greengart, research director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis. “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications. It also builds on Palm’s heritage in PDAs by managing your digital information – whether that’s on a corporate server or on the web.”

“The Pre’s dynamic ‘activity cards’ approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of information across multiple applications on and off the phone,” said Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. “With social networking and messaging being so important to consumers, the device’s new ‘Palm Synergy’ functionality – which gives Pre the ability to automatically pull friends’ contact details, messaging addresses and personal calendars from different applications online and on the phone – will greatly simplify people’s ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues the way they want.”

Pre: A New Kind of Phone

The new webOS platform introduces Palm Synergy™, a key feature that brings together your personal and professional calendar, contacts and e-mail into one centralized view, making transitions between work and personal life smooth and easy to manage.

With Palm Synergy, users get:

* Linked contacts – With Synergy, you have a single view that links your contacts from a variety of sources, so accessing them is easier than ever. For example, if you have the same contact listed in your Outlook(3), Google and Facebook accounts, Synergy recognizes that they’re the same person and links the information, presenting it to you as one listing.
* Layered calendars – Your calendars can be seen on their own or layered together in a single view, combining work, family, friends, sports teams, or other interests. You can toggle to look at one calendar at a time, or see them all at a glance.
* Combined messaging – Synergy lets you see all your conversations with the same person in a chat-style view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with text messaging. You can also see who’s active in a buddy list right from contacts or e-mail, and start a new conversation with just one touch.

Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.

Finding what you need is also easy with universal search – as you type what you’re looking for, webOS narrows your search and offers results from both your device and the web.(4) WebOS crushes the barriers to true mobile computing.

“Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “We’re a mobile society, and we want our people, calendars and information to move with us. With Pre’s exquisite design and the unique webOS software, running on Sprint’s fast broadband network, we’re changing the perception of what a wireless phone can be.”

Pre comes with a charger in the box, but for anyone tired of plugging a cord into their wireless phone, Palm introduces the Touchstone™ charging dock, the first inductive charging solution for phones, available exclusively for Pre. Simply set Pre down on top of the dock without worrying about connection, orientation or fit. Pre is active while charging, so you can access the touch screen, watch movies or video, or use the speakerphone. Set Pre on the charging dock when you’re on a call, and the speakerphone automatically turns on; when you take a ringing Pre off the dock, Pre automatically answers the call. Other mobile operating systems allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an intuitive method of switching between “cards,” which resemble clicking different tabs on a Web browser. New applications can be launched easily using the “Launcher” software button at the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications.

With nearly every wireless device today you have to exit one application completely before you can use another. That’s not what people are accustomed to; think of your PC and all the applications you can have open at one time.

Pre: The latest NOW Network milestone for Sprint

Pre also lets you access feature-rich Sprint content on the Sprint Now Network, including exclusive applications such as:

* Sprint Navigation(5)
* Sprint TV
* NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live

“Sprint’s Now Network brings you America’s most dependable 3G network, the largest push-to-talk community, and in selected markets Sprint is the only national carrier bringing 4G to life in 2009,”(6) Hesse said. “The Now Network is more than just a physical network – it’s also data plans that are all-inclusive, eliminating fear of data overages and a perfect fit for Palm Pre users.”

Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels, and Sprint’s high-value Everything data plans consistently beat AT&T’s and Verizon’s comparable plans in savings by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars over two years. With the revolutionary launch of Ready Now, which Sprint pioneered, customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re about to take home. As a result of these measures and more, Sprint customer satisfaction indices – from first call resolution to billing satisfaction, from customer care response time to service and repair – have all significantly improved during the past year.

Pricing and Availability

The Palm Pre phone will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling accessories also will be available for Pre, including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone™ Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.

More information is available at www.sprint.com/palmpre.

Palm has been cagey about when its next-generation smartphone, the Palm Pre, will be coming out. Now the normally reliable New York Times cites “people briefed on the company’s plans” who say that the Pre will be released the first week of June.

If it comes out then, it will be facing stiff summer competition, from — among others — a revamped iPhone (also expected to be announced in June, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference) and Samsung’s first Android-based smartphone, the i7500.

And it will have to sell at least a million units to be considered a “hit,” the Times reports.

Our take: It will have to sell a lot more than that, because Palm has staked the company on this ambitious phone. The company fanned the flames with over-the-top hype at CES, preserved a nearly Apple-like shroud of secrecy around the phone since then, and has only now allowed what we assume are a series of carefully staged “sightings” around the San Francisco Bay Area. Result: Geeks are anticipating this phone more eagerly than anything since, well, the first-generation iPhone.

Cellphone Makers Hope for a Blockbuster Summer – NYTimes.com.

Photo credit: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com