Wait for it.

Hey, there’s a good idea!

Seriously, how long does Palm have? I suppose an indefinite period of time, I wouldn’t buy them…but I suspect, by the time Palm actually delivers a revised Pre that can’t also slice cheese:

…and a functional app store experience…Apple will have released the next beast to sell 30m units in 24 months out from under them, or rather with a foot on their necks…oh well…I don’t miss my Palm devices….despite having used one for nearly 5 years…strange how easy it is to betray technological loyalty. – J.C.

Palm sent the folks who signed up to win a Pre an email letting them know they could buy it.

UPDATE: Here is a link to a NY Times story talking about demand…

Ok, I’ve been reading every damn note, article, tweet, and blog post re: PALMs new Pre smartphone. And have come to the conclusion that the Pre will not be an iPhone killer out of the gate. Here are my reasons:

1. The poor battery life will be the deal breaker.
2. People are_not_going to leave Verizon or AT&T for this device.
3. Apple will address the majority of the Pre’s competitive advantages in the iPhone 3.0 release, likely to hit on 6/8/09.
4. The gambit by Palm to sync the Pre with iTunes will only serve to highlight the Pre’s shortcomings.
5. By the time Verizion might offer the phone, sometime in 2010, another manufacturer will deliver a more intersting product…likely APPL.

Sprint’s decision to allow buyers to avoid paying full retail and take advantage of the instant rebate only at Best Buy stores speaks to another major issue for Sprint/Palm; namely the size and ability of their channel to sell this item through.

I’ll bet the sales of this device will peak in the next 72 hours never to see the same spike in demand over time…they’re simply not enough people who will seek the phone out…or trust the slickster hawkers at mall kiosks to drop their existing plans to sign up w/Sprint for a smartphone they need to come some $300+ out of pocket for…and then only to find 20 apps and less than a days useful life in the battery…it’s going to take interest over the long tail for this device to catch on…if it catches on at all.

Anyway, as a former Palm loyalist and gadget hound, I’m interested to see this device…if I find myself at the mall and Palm has done its job supplying the aformentioned channel, then maybe I will see it. I’ll be sure to post an update w/my thoughts on the device itself if I do.

"Oh we'll be doing applications, don't you remember? We had lots of them..."

Ok, so believe it or not…there were smartphones before the iPhone…in fact, PALM had made quite a few of them…prior to my owning an iPhone, I owned no less than 4 Palm devices…2 of which were smartphones…the Treo 600 and the 650…both of which were handy devices…in fact, for note taking, IMHO, they were better devices than my iPhone…which I still can’t import those notes into w/out a mod…that said…the iPhone blows the Treo away on almost all other counts…as soon as APPL made their phone available…and I managed to get my hands on one…I sold both the iPod and the Treo…because I was sick of having to carry around mulitple devices…

Fast forward to ah…yesterday. As soon as Palm announced their Pre product…I signed up for the mailing list…wanting to make sure I could understand what the product might bring to the table…so far it seems to be mostly marketing promises…Palm has a talented team…I believe they do get mobile and touchscreen usability…and IMHO competition for the iPhone is healthy…will provide for better products all around…but these situational videos that Palm has created just hit me the wrong way…They’re attempting to be aspirational…but they strike me as stiff…the feature set, apart from the true multitasking isn’t that sexy…and if I had to put a wager down today…I’d say that Apple won’t be waiting by the sidelines to see what Palm’s next play will be…I suspect on June 8 @ WWDC, in a hail of a possible Jobsian glory, SJ may rise from the dead and reclaim his seat on the throne as King Geek, delivering a thunderclap revision to the iPhone product that leaves the Pre stillborn. Or maybe they’ll just ship iPhone OS 3.0…either way…Pre is going to have a hill to climb…