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The much-anticipated Palm Pre went on sale over the weekend and some initial sales estimates are in. But exactly what they mean is a point of debate.

Most reports peg weekend sales somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000. The Wall Street Journal’s headline read, “Palm’s Pre Sells Briskly at Launch.” The story said the Pre “delivered on high expectations that positioned it as an iPhone rival.” Sounds pretty good, huh?

But not everyone is so rosy about Pre sales, not even everyone at the Journal.

Over at the Journal’s AllThingsD blog, John Paczkowski, gave this account:

“The Palm (PALM) Pre officially went on sale this morning (Saturday), and judging from initial reports–and my experience at a local Northern California Sprint store–neither demand or supply was particularly overwhelming.”

Sprint and Palm have been boasting that the Pre has been selling out at many stores, but Paczkowski, for one, thinks that has a lot to do with short supply (some Best Buy stores only received four units). All that brings up the question of whether Palm and Sprint are purposely constraining supply to make demand look bigger. Neither company has publicly published supply or sales numbers, but Palm denied the tactic.

Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider points out the opening weekend take is only a fraction of the 1 million units Apple shipped on the iPhone 3G’s opening weekend last summer.

But even that may not be a fair comparison if Sprint and Palm are really going after business customers with the Pre, as the New York Times reported on Friday (Despite its overall success, the iPhone hasn’t made great inroads with the business community).

Investors certainly didn’t appear thrilled with the early reports. While both Palm and Sprint have enjoyed big stock run-ups already in anticipation of the Pre launch, Palm shares were down as much as 11.7% in morning trading and Sprint shares fell as much as 4.5%. (Those stock price numbers likely also reflect fears that a cheaper iPhone-possibly in the $99 to $149 range-could hurt Pre sales.)

Of course the Smartphone War won’t be won over one weekend. Palm and Sprint might be thankful for that right now. Or not.

 

Comments (1)

	1. 06-08-2009 19:44
	As a dedicated Palm Pilot and Treo user for over a decade, I'd love to see a viable competitor to the iPhone arise from Palm and only time will tell if this is it. I think the fact that it is CDMA-only right now (limiting it to the US) and that Palm has limited programmer access to functions (hence hobbling the number of apps available) is going to impede its superstar status, at least for a while. I have heard that it appears as an iPod when connected to iTunes, which is a savvy and cheeky move (while it lasts). Registered

Frederick B. Kauber

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