Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 8 Sep 2009 17:02:33 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090908/1504336131.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090908/1504336131.shtml pricing the Palm Pre at the equivalent price of an iPhone: $199 (after annoying mail-in rebate that turns many buyers off). In fact, I argued why it would make a lot more sense to further subsidize the phone all the way to free, and make up the money on the backend with more subscriptions. Given how heavily invested Sprint was in the Pre, and how pathetic the sales have been to date, it really makes very little sense to keep the price so high. So, at the very least, I thought it was a good first step this morning when it was "announced" that Sprint was offering the Pre at $99. Of course, there were some silly things about this promotion as well. First, it only applied to new customers, transferring numbers over from other carriers. What better way to mock your loyal customers than to offer others a better deal? Second, they didn't just discount the phone, but gave you a "credit" that was split over the first three bills (better than a mail-in rebate, but still annoying). However, what was even stranger was that Sprint didn't even seem to understand the promotion itself. John Paczkowski noted that in some places on Sprint's website it said the promotion ran until October 10th. In others it said October 31st.

Apparently, the confusion at Sprint headquarters went well beyond that, because as the company attempted to sort out the confusion, it announced that it was doing away with the special promotion entirely. And yet, even after announcing it, the offer page remained on Sprint's site. It's not at all clear what happened here, other than Sprint seems somewhat clueless in how to do basic promotions, pricing and marketing. Obviously, the company intended to offer the phone for $99 -- it's on the company's own site. And yet, now it's suddenly claiming that it was a mistake? I can already see the business school case study on how not to launch an innovative smart phone.

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]]> great-moments-in-marketing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090908/1504336131 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:52:38 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090827/0404506022.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090827/0404506022.shtml Apple, who seems able to bring developers to the table with cultish enthusiasm and loyalty.

Palm doesn't quite have that.

If the problem was that the SDK wasn't ready, Sprint and Palm should have waited. Launching before the phone was really ready was a mistake, and the company may be paying for it with rather weak sales after an initial burst. However, one analyst has a suggestion that I think makes a lot of sense, saying that Sprint should drop the price of the Palm Pre to $0.99. Basically, let Sprint subsidize more of the phone -- which it would easily make back in service fees (since the phone requires a two year contract with its most expensive data plan). Pricing the phone at $199 makes it a direct comparison to the iPhone, and that's the last thing that Palm or Sprint should want. But dropping the price to $1 (or, hell, give the damn phone away for free with a two year plan), would get it a lot of attention, and give people a real reason to switch away from other carriers or other phones, and give the Pre a shot. Trying to compete with the iPhone by just saying "but we're better" doesn't work. Rather than spending tons of money on creepy TV commercials that make no sense, why not use that ad budget to subsidize the phone in a way that really builds up a lot of attention and serious buyers? If Sprint did that, I'd go sign up for a Palm Pre that very day.

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