Could Sprint lose its Palm Pre exclusivity early? Possibly. According to Tiernan Ray of Tech Trader Daily, Colorado-based TownHall Research issued a research note this morning stating that there are fewer than 250, 000 active Palm Pre smartphones currently, due to returns related to a keyboard issue.
“While there have not been any significant long term engineering issues, the Palm Pre’s keyboard creates friction when sliding that causes the battery to recycle. This gives the appearance of poor battery life as the recurring powering up cycle drain the battery faster than it would through normal use,” said TownHall analyst David Eller in the note.
Citing this issue, Eller says that only 50, 000 Pres have been sold in July. That’s 25, 000 units sold weekly but Sprint’s agreement with Palm requires 117, 000 weekly unit sales to keep its exclusivity.
Verizon is already expected to beginning carrying the Pre sometime near the end of 2009 or early in 2010. But would Palm cut its agreement with Sprint early because of its own hardware issue? Maybe Palm should. Verizon is a much larger and reliable network than Sprint. Even some iPhone 3GS owners are calling for Apple to cut its exclusivity agreement with AT&T and make a move to Verizon. This despite sales of 1.4 million iPhone 3GS’ by the end of June and 6.5 million units waiting in the supply chain ready to be sold.
We’ll have to see what happens.
Eller also says the rumored “Pixie”, Palm’s 2nd webOS smartphone is still expected to launch before Christmas with Sprint and one other carrier. But he goes on to say that without supporting Pre sales, Palm may not have the marketing dollars to make it a success.