Palm Pre Launched...and this was done at a very special price!

Palm Pre, the Iphone's competitor, has been launched and customers searching for a bargain online were just surprised! Best Buy had lowered the price of the Palm Pre by more than half over the weekend. Unfortunately this surprise was short lived as it turned out to be a mistake, although it was one which many were able to exploit.

The confusion stemmed from an in-store promotion offering the device, usually sold by Best Buy for $199, for $99. It appears the idea was to simply promote Best Buy’s standard offer, but an error with promotional material unintentionally turned it into a sale deal.

Palm Pre

If this had happened in the early nineties the impact of this mistake would have been very limited however with the spread of the Internet, the consequences were not small. Potential buyers started noticing the price and started informing others online. As the word spread out the number of units sold started to increase.

Best Buy confirmed, through its marketing manager, that the discounted price as actually a mistake. He said that the company is composed of humans and that these are bound to making mistakes. He also confirmed that the orders were honoured even those that were made at the price of $99.

Some people do not believe the mistake issue but are coming up with various theories of why Best Buy came up with a discounted price. One of these theories suggest that Palm or Best Buy is planning a price cut for later in the year, perhaps for a back to school promotion, and that this promotion was activated in advance by mistake. Another advanced theory is that the firm wanted a relatively cheap way of researching how popular such a price cut would be. The incident has certainly generated plenty of publicity for the idea that a $99 Palm Pre would be good value. However, there’s no guarantee that people giving the obvious response that $99 is better than $199 would translate into a suitable increase in profits.

Apple plans price cut to boost demand

I was planning to upgrade my mobile phone and was looking at what's available on the market before venturing to any brick and mortar store. While browsing for news about the Apple iPhone I came across a very interesting news which, if confirmed, will probably have me waiting a little bit more before upgrading.

Apple is planning to expand it market share in the smart phone market as it is thought that next Monday it will be announcing the launch of its new iPhones which will be priced at around $50 or $100 less than the current US iPhone price of $199.

Apple currently accounts to about about 11 per cent of the world’s smart phones market, trailing behind Nokia’s 41 per cent volume and Research in Motion’s 20 per cent, according to Gartner figures from the first quarter.

The news, of the new cheaper iPhone is expected to be divulged by apple during the developer conference, a conference which Apple usually uses to introduce most of their products. However till today, Apple has declined to comment the news which has been widely reported in all international media. The much awaited conference, begins on Monday with a keynote speech by senior vice-president and marketing chief Phil Schiller. Reports are also spreading that during the conference it will also be announced that founder Steve Jobs is planning to return to work after a period of medical leave.

Coming back to the new iPhone, with the price reduction of $100 Apple is expected to increase demand by 100%. The production of the new iPhone is expected to start in July. While iPhone and Apple enthusiasts will be longing to see the latest product from Apple, competitors such as Palm (which was famous for its PDAs in the 90s and is aiming to revive its fortunes and take market share from Apple) will not be very happy to hear this news.

I believe that the latest price cut could lead the mobile market to grow again as users start switching from less functional mobile phone sets to the latest and now cheaper Smart Phones.