Palm Centro: 2 million examples of “price matters”
Palm hit a milestone today: two million Palm Centros sold since the Palm OS smartphone was introduced. In fact, they hit the one million milestone just a few short months ago. Amazing and a good example of why price does matter in mobile technology. Actually, it’s two million examples, but why nitpick?
Here’s a smartphone that you won’t pay over $99 for after the standard two-year commitment and subsidy. In fact, I’ve seen the device on sale at brick-and-mortar retailers for as little as $49. A year or two ago if you had said to me "I think we’ll see a full-featured smartphone for under $100", I would said "You’re right, but what year do expect to see that in: 2010 or 2011?"
Why raise the "price matters" argument? Because it emphasizes the backwards trend we’re witnessing in the netbook market. Even the original $200 Asus became a $399 device for most… new models are even higher and that’s going to hurt consumer adoption to a degree. Congrats to Palm, however. They take a fair amount of ribbing on their product line these days, but you have to give them credit: they not only saw the potential for a low-cost smartphone, they got such a product to market. Two million of them to be precise.
Not only is the Centro cheap, it’s also an excellent device.
People knock Palm for their tired OS. To me, that tired OS is the best reason to be on a Palm device. What some people call old, others consider mature.
If you have a software need, chances are there’s a Palm app. that has you covered.
We bought my wife a Centro and paid full list for it because we didn’t want to go back under contract with Sprint. It’s a terrific little smartphone…and an incredible deal for $99. I’d have one, too, if it weren’t for my insistence on a full-sized SDHC slot (which my 700p has).
indeed, one part of the eeepc bomb was the price, the other was the ui and os.
now we are basically looking at cheap mini-laptops, there before was sold at a premium for road warriors that could or needed to afford it.
my guess, microsoft put mud in the water…
Of course, another aspect to look at is profit margin: how much money does Palm make on each of these devices?
I agree with Nate, as does David Pogue of the NYTimes, Mickey and Joey of TheCellphoneJunkie, etc. The browser is sub-par, it should have bluetooth voice dialing, and better noise cancellation (mic on the front, maybe?) but other than that…
Turned off data (not worth it to me), and have achieved cellphone-PDA consolidation for $49 on VZ’s “New Every Two” plan. Can’t buy any PDA for that price.
That 2/10ths of an inch makes a big difference: you’re holding a candybar phone to your head, not a big slab of plastic. It fits nicely in your pocket, too. The included Dataviz DocsToGo and PocketTunes Deluxe are more “price matters” gravy.
Yes, price matters. Even though it’s a great device, if it were priced at $150, I would have skipped it and got a free phone (Moto W755 or such).
Since you brought it up, it’s not entirely off-topic: I have this…feeling that nobody ever intentioned to sell $200 notebooks forever, that it was planned all along to be, “well, but wouldn’t you really like a larger hard drive? It’s only another $50″. And then it’s, “Wouldn’t you like this more if it had a somewhat larger screen?” and so on, slowly dropping the lowest priced model as people gravitate to a better equipped notebook until people forget why they were interested in this category and prices are where they are now.