Sprint
Sprint, which will carry the Pre exclusively at least through the end of the year, lost 1.25 million of its valuable contracted subscribers during the first three months of the year - even worse than the 1.1 million that fled to other wireless carriers in the fourth quarter.
Hesse said the Pre gives Sprint an opportunity to show off its competitive voice and data networks and service plans - things that could help the company retain subscribers and lure new ones. He said Sprint has “vastly” improved its customer service and network performance.
“We are a very, very different company than we were 12 months ago,” Hesse told a group of media, analysts and customers in New York on Friday, a day before the release of the smart phone.
Hesse said he himself has been using the Pre for six weeks.
The Pre has a touch-screen and slide-out keyboard and will cost $200 with a two-year service plan and rebate. It also sports Palms new operating system, webOS. Numerous early reviews, including one by The Associated Press, have been positive, citing the Pres ease of use.
Besides potentially helping Sprint reverse its declines, industry analysts also consider the Pre to be Palms best hope for fighting back against Research In Motions BlackBerry and Apple Inc.s iPhone handsets. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm needs a boost, as sales of its phones fell 42 percent year-over-year to 482,000 in its December-February quarter.
At an industry conference last month, Hesse said Sprint would not be advertising the Pre that much early on because of expected shortages. Hesse said then that the Overland Park, Kan.-based carrier “wont be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”
In an interview Friday, the president of Sprints business markets group, Paget Alves, said much advertising hasnt been necessary because there has been so much buzz about the product following its announcement at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Alves believes Sprint will have enough phones to satisfy demand at launch, but that the product initially will “clearly end up being constrained.”
Alves would not disclose how many Pres will be available on Saturday, but he did say fewer will be available at Radio Shack and Best Buy stores than at official Sprint stores.
He also said that more than half a million people registered online either with Palm or Sprint to get information about the Pres availability and, for existing Sprint customers, to get on a waiting list to buy it when it comes out.
“This is like the Wii for us,” he said, referring to Nintendo Co.s popular gaming console, which faced shortages given high demand following its late-2006 release.