Sprint’s CEO thinks there will be a Pre shortage, decides not to take advantage
And so it begins. Not even 24 hours after the Palm Pre announcement, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse assumed the roll of Buzz Killington when he explained Sprint’s lack of high-visibility Pre advertising to investors. According to Hesse, Sprint “didn’t intend to advertise [the Pre] heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while” and that it “won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.” Okay, so let’s get this straight. Sprint didn’t heavily advertise the Palm Pre — the handset that is supposed to turn things around for the company — because Hesse & Co. are afraid of pissing people off if they might have to wait a few weeks for their phones to arrive? Hesse, buddy, shortages can often be an amazing way to pique the general public’s interest. It worked with the first iPhone, it worked with the Storm and it sure as hell worked with the Wii. It won’t work for the Pre however, if no one knows the handset exists. Ugh.
nobody better say first…*buzz fuckingtons*!!!
Like I said b4…
Dead network (sprint), dead handset maker (palm). I smell a VZW buyout…sniff sniff. Good call Elevation Partners…way to back the wrong horse…
i need a gsm version palm am with sprint now but i will no longer have sprint in a few months so i can’t buy the sprint version
/:)
> …Good call Elevation Partners…
They have a mixed history of success – one big win with some sort of Electronic Arts-related deal, then a bunch of not-very-impressive results (that is to say, losers or potential losers (Forbes springs to mind)), and Palm, currently about 50+% win if they sell right now.
@ mo
i agree with you bro, if this isnt the turn around phone from Sprint that they have been talking about way back when the device wasnt even out, then goodbye sprint. you failed us once again just merge with Verzion (Keeping the Verizon name) so there can be only ONE CDMA network and make the Pre to Verizon. Lol.
Off to a good start Palm. First chose Sprint, then let the fiasco begin. Anyone hear circus music in the background?
Oh while here….can I take my Pre to Europe and expect it to work?
@ freddyg
i agree with you bro, if this isnt the turn around phone from Sprint that they have been talking about way back when the device wasnt even out, then goodbye sprint. you failed us once again just merge with Verzion (Keeping the Verizon name) so there can be only ONE CDMA network and make the Pre to Verizon. Lol.
Perhaps the CEO is saying this to actually increase buzz. The CEO says its limited, we need to get one early! If you have not seen this in marketing yet, I think you are blind. They have it everywhere in print, every blogger is talking about it, and you see it a lot with NBA, NASCAR and MLB events. Not bad considering they have not played a lot of TV commercials yet.
The pre is not a world phone.
Do you idiots do any type of research before asking dumb questions?
Wow…Hesse is a fucking momo…
The Pre was always destined to fail imo. I do wonder if I’ll be wrong
“shortages can often be an amazing way to pique the general public’s interest. It worked with the first iPhone”
Pretty certain there were more than 30,000 iphones available on day 1.
Yeah, I knew the answer but wanted to see who could creatively answer my question.
The main question is, why are they going to be such shortages? Palm has had plenty of time to get its mfg up and running. can it be Sprint is hedging its bets to see how much demand there will be before really ramping up production? Either way, pretty pathetic that the CEO has to come out with this kind of lame news.
I think if verizon were to get its hands onto sprint they would have to drop a significant amount of current users,
If i were Leap Wireless, US Cellular and whomever else may be a regional carrier that id pool resources and buy sprint then divide it up amongst themselves
Wow, BGR is just now reporting on exactly what I posted what, 24 hours ago?
In that case.
The pre is an international phone except for use in Nigeria.
The 9630 has a touch screen.
The new iphone has a slide out keyboard.
The new storm has a front facing camera.
Except, you are a lonely man with a lonely website. BGR is not. @$$
@Moe, no, I posted that information here on BGR. All the other tech blogs are just now picking up on it.
Anyway, 30,000 Pres = about 178 Pres manufactured per day. FAIL. Who is the numnut they hired to put these things together, George Bush? (the timing is right if you think about it).
Dan Hesse is an ass and all his Sprint commercial were pointless, good thing they took it off that bafoon. why wouldn’t you take advantage now that it might be shortages. Like come on what nut job wouldn’t handle this quickly. What would it mean to other Sprint customers that couldnt pick up a Pre and decides to pick one up. I smell Sprint failure
Metro PCS this is your time are you hearing this, buy Sprint !!! lol
And the winner and still champion …….the iPhone hahhahaha
Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).
All these post are from people that are hoping the phone will not be popular so the exclusivity til the end of the year won’t last so your prefered carrier will get it need to grow up and stop wishing for the demise of a needed carrer and an alright manufacterer
I’m on the other side of this… There is a limited budget. I wouldn’t advertise until I needed to. With very little advertising they’ve built up enough buzz to warrant a sellout. If the device is amazing, then people will talk, and do the advertising for you.
I would hold-off on ads until the product has launched. Product launches are unpredictable, and I wouldn’t put all of my eggs in that basket, especially when I didn’t need to.
I think a bigger question isn’t “when” but “how” are they going to advertise this device? Blackberry obviously went the “we are fun” route with their ads, trying to break away from their corporate business-only image, while Apple went the demonstration route, showing off how the device works by actually using the device in the commercial. I wonder what Palm will do (and I hope it isn’t those “calming effect” videos we’ve seen on the net). I would love a comparison ad series (ala Apple vs PC campaign) with Palm stacking up Pre to the competition, but Palm’s tone they’ve set already shows that they aren’t going to try to be that brash. They seem to want to play nicely, so I am wondering what they’ll do.
** THIS JUST IN **
I just heard from Hesse announce that not only will there be a shortage of Pre’s… but there is going to be a shortage of MINUTES.
So even if you get one, you might not be able to make calls for a couple weeks till they can roll out some more airtime.