Next week the holiday shopping season officially kicks into gear, and while this blogger has yet to even consider what to get most people on his list, he can at least tell you that if you’re looking to pick up a Sprint Palm Pre, Black Friday may be your friend. The folks at Radio The Shack will have the Palm Pre (new contracts only) on sale starting at 5:30 am on the day after Thanksgiving for the price of $99.99.

Yeah, that’s more than you’ll pay at Amazon and the same you’ll fork over to Walmart online today, but there’s something to be said for being able to walk out the door with the phone in your hand. Curiously, The Shack will not have any deals on the Palm Pixi, meaning for one cent under a Franklin you can get a Pixi, or a Pixi with a bigger screen, faster processor, smaller form factor, and WiFi (otherwise known as a Pre). Decisions decisions.

Thanks to Drew for the tip!

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Walk into just about any Best Buy or Radio Shack The Shack and you’ll see a full compliment of smartphones sitting there awaiting your perusal. In the section dedicated to Sprint, you’ll find the Palm Pre, but if you try and do any of those crazy gestures you’ve seen online, you’re going to be sorely disappointed by the display phone’s dummy status.

Cathy Stauffer of Gerson Lehrman Group (a consulting firm) brought up the issue, making the interesting argument that a smartphones like the Pre or iPhone are “highly experiential devices,” i.e. you have to truly play with one to understand why you’d want one. I’m thinking back, and I seem to remember an awful lot of Palm phones being dummy phones when on display outside of Sprint stores. If the only place you can do that is at a Sprint store, then Best Buy and The Shack customers are going to be left out in the cold. And standing right next to them just begging to help keep them warm? A full live working iPhone.

Stauffer is right: Palm needs for customers to be able to experience the Pre and understand what makes it unique and not “just another iPhone killer wannabe.” That means getting their hands on the phone in person wherever possible, and better advertising that (as the iPhone ads do) shows what makes the phone special.

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If you’ll think back to Palm’s last quarterly conference call, they revealed that around 810,000 Pre phones had been sold. Now today despite the pleasant surprise in sales numbers that beat most estimations, one of those unruly analysts has reared his head and claimed that Palm is indeed not doing as well as we all thought. David Eller of Town Hall Research (whom we have heard from before) said in a recent note that Palm’s sales figures were inflated by reporting the number of units sold by Sprint plus those that Sprint shipped to third party resellers (e.g. Best Buy) instead of the actual number of activated units. Eller went on to say that “channel inventory is currently about 11 weeks, which we believe will pressure reorder rates and make it more difficult to sell high [average selling price] products going forward.”

Palm would have nothing of it, and in a response to John Paczkowski of Digital Daily said, “The sell-through data we post reflects carriers’ sales to their customers. For example, Sprint customers include consumers who buy in a Sprint store, and Sprint retail partners such as Best Buy and RadioShack. We rely on our wireless carriers to provide us with sell-through data, and we note this fact in our 10Q.”

[via: Gizmodo]

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It must be torture to be a Sprint, Best Buy or Radio Shack store employee right now and unbox, set up, and sell the Palm Pre to everyone else but not have one in your own pocket. According to an alleged internal memo reported by Sprint Gurus, effective 6/29/09, store employees and Advantage Club members will [...]

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Apparently the kindly folks behind Radio Shack counters are slightly tired of Best Buy getting all the rumor-tastic attention.  In addition to the launch-day list of stores that should have stock for the Pre, we were also sent the above photo suggesting that – at least as of now – Radio Shack will be pricing the Pre at $599 out of contract.  Seems a might bit high to us, but at least it’s not Best Buy numbers. 

Additionally, another Radio Shack tipster lets loose with an internal email detailing some of Radio Shack’s launch-day plans.  The stuff you need to know:

• No Pre-orders, no way, no how.  No early selling either, despite the fact that the Pre phones may very well be in the back room any day now:

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT – Stores CANNOT use the advance deposit functionality in the POS to "reserve" a Palm Pre for a customer, nor can any sales or "reservations" be made prior to June 6. Due to the production of the Palm Pre, initial supplies will be limited. For that reason, supply will be limited at the time of launch, and we want to ensure that all on-hand units are available for customers on the June 6 launch date.

• No purchases with employee plans (in other words: no Pre sales for employees at first)
• Each store will have one live demo unit that is to be attached to the hip of a Radio shack employee and may not under any circumstances be sold.
• No transfers to other Radio Shack stores are allowed – if your local Radio Shack isn’t on the stock list, don’t expect that they’ll be able to have one shipped over
• Displays, training materials, and the like are headed out to stores now and should all be in place by June 4th. These materials include a video demo DVD

There you have it, folks.  Limited Radio Shack locations, no pre-orders or pre-sales of any kind allowed, and we’re betting they’re not even going to throw in a free 10 Ohm resistor with every purchase.

Thanks anonymous tipsters!

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As reported by Reuters (and then every other news outlet under the sun), at an investors conference this morning, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told shareholders:

“We don’t intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while. We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”

This jives with earlier rumors about there being a limited supply for the Pre on hand at launch, possibly around 375,000 units – all to be spread out to thousands of Sprint stores and select Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Radio Shack locations nationwide. Analysts Lawrence Harris of CL King Associates doesn’t expect that Sprint will be able to poach many customers from Verizon or AT&T, saying, “It’s going to sell principally into the base, to existing Palm owners and existing Sprint subscribers.”

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Well, well! This morning we reported on possible June 6th date and now it just got official! Palm posted on their blog that Palm Pre will be available on June 6th via all Sprint stores …

Related posts:

1. Sprint is counting down to June 6th launch of Palm Pre?
2. Will you pay $69.99 for Palm Pre Touchstone?
3. O2 exclusivity confirmed by stores managers, Palm Pre UK release date end of July?

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