Palm Pre demand outpaces intial iPhone demand in UK!
By Will Park on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 2:15 PM PST In Announcements, O2, Palm, Research, Web OS
While the iPhone might be the most satisfying smartphone in the US, more and more Brits are looking toward the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre to quench their smartphone cravings. A new survey from TNS indicates that a healthy 26% of the UK is interested in picking up an O2 (NYSE: TEF) Palm Pre of their own – they are either definitely or probably going to buy an O2 Palm Pre in the near future. Compared with just 16% of Brits that were showed initial interest in the iPhone in TNS’s 2007 survey, it’s clear that the Palm Pre is in higher demand than the iPhone.
The survey also showed the 27% of current O2 customers were interested in picking up a Palm Pre. That compares with 17% of O2 customers that were looking to pick up an iPhone from their carrier in 2007. The numbers point to a UK Palm Pre launch that might just give the US launch some insecurity issues.
To be fair, the higher interest in the Palm Pre is likely attributable to the Pre’s free-on-contract pricing. The iPhone was offered for £269, and many of those initial iPhone customers are coming up on contract renewals that would allow them to put a Palm Pre in their pockets for free. There’s also the possibility that the iPhone itself may have boosted Palm Pre awareness by way of bringing the smartphone to forefront of the consumer mind.
The Palm Pre hasn’t been the fantastic success that Palm had hoped for the US market, but all is not lost. If TNS survey results pan out, Palm could see the Pre carving out significant market share in the UK.
[Via: CN]
I’m glad to hear this because I’ve had my Palm Pre for 4 months and absolutely love it. I just think there are too many iPhone lovers here in the U.S. that are stuck with an AT&T contract which clearly places an excuse not to even consider anything else. The iPhone is a great phone but believe me, after reading hundreds of reviews it’s obvious that most iPhone users are in denial. Most of them don’t have a clue on the capabilities of the Pre. I’ve tried using the new iPhone 3GS many times and I just felt slow without the multi-tasking card view feature. This is absolutely a great feature that will help business owners become more efficient on a day to day basis.
I’ve been an iphone user for years now and went through all three iterations, currently using a 3GS. The Pre is nice, I tested it as I did with Android phones. One thing is clear, the pre is no iphone. The issue is not so much the basic smartphone feature set but the fact that applications currently available on the pre are nothing but spruced up web pages. Almost like the iphone web links before the app store was opened. Safari on the iphone can leave up to 8 different web pages open at the same time between which you can jump. in any case these are not “real” applications as they run on the iphone. Multitasking might be much talked about but is basically a non issue if apps open quickly or one app even uses the capabilities of another one (e.g. emailing). Also, there are more than 80.000 applications available for the iphone…..the pre doesn’t even come close to beating this ! I’m sure Apple will offer multi tasking along the way once battery life becomes better which i think is the most glaring issue with smart phones these days. Battery life should be a major driver of a buying decision but I don’t have a clue how the Pre is performing in this regard.
best
Dieter
The Palm Pre’s multitasking capability is second to none while the iPhone cannot even multitask between 3rd party applications. If iPhone has managed to finally include Copy/Paste and MMS technology just now after 2 years, imagine how long it would take for iPhone to implement the complexity of true multitasking – probably after 5 years. By that time, the Palm Pre has moved onto bigger, better, and more complex technologies.
Palm Pre has a real keyboard (also onscreen keyboard) for fast and accurate typing, a removable battery to extend and swap higher capacity batteries, and direct removable USB Drive functionality. The Palm Pre’s processor clearly kills and blows away the iPhone 1G, 2G, and 3G running at 600 MHz. If you don’t have the 3Gs model, the “iPhone Killer” already has your name on it’s death count.
What most dedicated iPhone fans dismiss is that the Palm Pre’s webOS runs on the Linux OS just as the Android. This is a clear indication that the Palm Pre can do more than just run spruced up webpage apps, it can launch hard-core native apps as well (e.g. Nintento Entertainment video games). The fact that Adobe has designed mobile Flash Player to run on the Palm Pre with the ability to natively interface with the Pre’s multi-touch screen, accelerometer, and 3D engine, iPhone is gonna be left in the dust without direct runtime Flash compatibility.
It’s apparent that the only dependency the iPhone his clinging on to is the number of apps 3rd party developers have developed. 3rd party developers is one of the factors that give the iPhone an advantage. Ironically, more and more 3rd party developers are expanding their market and making the Palm Pre popular. When the majority of 3rd party developers have migrated and cloned their apps onto the Palm Pre, what will the iPhone have left to boast and cling to? This is why many consider the Palm Pre as an iPhone killer.