David Carnoy from CNET has an editorial dicussing the price of Sprint's new webOS handset. Rumors have pegged the device at $299 on a two-year contract, however "Sprint has to do better. It has to break $199 and preferably hit $149...$299 would be suicide," he states.
One reason why the price should be lower is Sprint's service plans, which are nothing special. "Sprint's service plans for the Pre appear to be very similar to those of the iPhone", he states, referring to the plans of $69, $89, and $99 including unlimited data and varying talk time.
With the iPhone starting at $199 and T-Mobile's G1 costing $179, the other choices are just too tempting; especially with an iPhone upgrade looming on the horizon. "...at least $149 gives it (Sprint) a fighting chancek" he adds. While unlikely, early rumors predicted the Pre at $150 after rebate; so we wouldn't completely rule out the Pre undercutting the base iPhone in price. RIM is also pushing the market with more consumer-friendly BlackBerrys, and were recently endorsed by celebrities Howard Stern and U2.
In addition, Palm can't count on the Pre stealing away iPhone and Blackberry customers (a scenario predicted by Palm investor Roger Mcnamee). A ChangeWave study reported on by The Baltimore Sun found that only 1 percent of iPhone users were "somewhat likely" to switch to a Pre, and none were "very likely". Blackberry users were only slightly more inclined, with 3 percent "somewhat likely" and 1 percent "very likely" to switch over. This suggests that RIM and Apple will continue to dominate the smartphone arena for some time, and if the Pre wants to gain traction it will have to take away from the weaker smartphone players, such as Nokia and Samsung.
By comparison, the HTC Magic should not give Palm too much trouble, says Mobile Phones. In their analysis of the latest and greatest from HTC, they found webOS running smoothly and well optimized for mobile internet access. Comparitively, the HTC magic comes equipped with only 512MB, although can be expanded with microSD cards. Messages must be tapped out using a virtual keyboard, and it lacks a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
"In our opinion it's all about user experience and so we'd have to say that the Palm Pre wins out here. It does pretty much everything the HTC Magic does, only with a lot more style. We love the fact that the Pre is so easy to use and that searching for contacts provides you with a list of communications options."
Going back to the iPhone, will the Pre be worth as much as the iPhone 3.0? Most likely, yes. In regards to the much-touted update, weaknesses are already beginning to show. AppleInsider took a look at Sprint's press lounge at the CTIA conference in Vegas, where Palm was running presentations of third-party software on the Pre including Pandora and Classic.
While Pandora's internet radio app could not run in the background on an iPhone, it ran seamlessly on the Pre while doing other tasks; and even used the notification bar to let users approve or dismiss songs without interruption. Meanwhile, the Classic app on the Pre underscores Apple's refusal to permit interpreting code within third-party apps; they no longer support their own Classic OS emulator on Leopard.
In terms of developer support, despite webOS looking to energize developers, a new study reported by FierceWireless found that only 8 percent of location-aware app developers are planning to port their apps to webOS; most are focusing their efforts on other platforms, such as iPhone and Android. This could be trouble for Palm, since location is now incorporated in many apps ranging from eduction to entertainment to finance. Palm is best to court support from these developers, especially since the GPS and online capabilities of the Pre make it ideally suited for apps that are location-aware.
In other news, Sprint has finally started incorporating the Palm Pre into their ad campaign, which is good news for Palm. The tech-savvy commercial is clearly a precursor to a big marketing move towards the release. In terms of a release date, Precentral has some fresh rumors of a possible mid-May release. Other rumors have predicted the date as early as April 30.
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