Palm Pre for $849, $299 & $199. Canadian Launch 2nd Half of the Year, India Not on the List!

Posted by Abbas ||

May 22, 2009 ||

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As promised Palm is delivering its new phone, Pre, in the first half of 2009! Pre will go on sale from 6th of June and will be available in Sprint and Best Buy and Radio Shack stores.

Pre is Palm’s last chance to make it big and turn the company around. So far the expectations are high and the phone is expected to sell in high numbers and I seriously doubt that. I spoke to few of my friends including my sister who are fairly tech savvy but they did not know much about Palm Pre. This goes to show that Palm’s marketing efforts did not do enough to publicize the product in the local market.

Another factor that can influence the sales of the phone is its network compatibility. The current version of the phone is compatible with CDMA network only, GSM compatible phone is yet to be announced.

Pre is priced at $199 after $100 mail-in rebate, which means you actually pay $299 initially and then claim your $100 later. It takes about 3-4 weeks to get the $100 in rebate back, however, if you buy Pre at Radio Shack or Best Buy then the rebate is applied at the cash counter itself. Now you know where to get your phone!

Interestingly Best Buy added Palm Pre (coming soon) to its product line on bestbuy.com and priced it at $849.99. This is the price for an unlocked version of the phone.

Palm Pre - Best Buy

Palm plans to launch Pre in Canada in the second half of the year which I hope does not mean December and the price of the phone will remain the same.

Talking about India, I don’t think it’s on Palm’s list at the moment. I say that because the Canadian site of Palm has a “notify me” badge for the users to sign up to know when the phone is launched and Indian site has no such option.

Palm Pre Canada Palm Pre India

While we (Indians) are only left to “learn more” about Palm Pre, I spoke to one of the largest suppliers of unlocked iPhone’s here in Hyderabad and Chennai and they very clearly mentioned that they will only deal with the GSM versions of the phone and not the CDMA.

It’s still a long way to go for people on the other side of the world to get a Palm Pre not just because its deal with Sprint but also because of lack of GSM version of the phone.