We’ve been waiting for it, everyone has been waiting for it, and now it’s here. Sprint’s new SmartPhone finally hit the streets this weekend there were queues up and down the country for the new handset. Some stores completely sold out of the phone and others had to resort to waiting lists.
According to Sprint sales of Palm Pre have broken all records for the company and is the fastest selling phone they’ve ever had.
“Palm Pre is the coming out party for the new Sprint. It is the perfect device that highlights all of the positive changes in our company,” said Dan Hesse, president and chief executive at Sprint.
Sprint hasn’t revealed any details about sales figures for the Palm Pre as yet but they have definitely exceeded Sprint’s expectations.
“We experienced our best one day of sales and single weekend sales for any phone we’ve launched in our history,” said Tim Donahue, vice president of business marketing for Sprint.
“We sold out of the device over the weekend in most of our store locations. And it happened at a much faster rate than we had planned on.”
This has got to be welcome news for Sprint who are the third largest wireless telecommunications company and who compete directly with carriers A and T and Verizon.
Sprint has exclusive rights to sell the SmartPhone for at least six months or so we believe.
Verizon have claimed that they will be able to sell the Palm Pre after six months but this has been disputed by Sprint.
No one really knows because neither Palm nor Sprint has disclosed any details so far as to how long the exclusivity period will last.
So why is the Palm Pre proving so popular?
The Palm Pre has been hailed as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone as some industry professionals are saying that the Palm Pre offers everything that Apple’s iPhone should have offered but didn’t.
However, that might change now that Apple have launched their new generation iPhone 3GS so we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
The Pre does have a lot going for it though. It has a slide out keyboard, a neat touch screen and you can switch between applications quickly and easily. It can handle multiple tasks at the same time which is highly convenient.
All in all the Palm Pre is a pretty cool phone for around $199.99 with Sprint.
