Will BlackBerry Users Take Pre in the Palms of Their Hands?

Thu, 18/06/2009 - 1:50pm — CellAdmin

There's been a lot of comparisons lately of the Palm Pre and the iPhone. Speculation has been rampant that the Pre will appeal to existing iPhone users, potentially drawing them away from AT&T's network and subsequently bolstering Sprint's troubling churn rates.

But as Research In Motion (RIM) prepares to report its first-quarter earnings today, it will be interesting to see whether the company's financials show any sign that the Pre's touchscreen, paired as it is with a slide-out keyboard, might be luring some Storm-scorned touchscreen-hungry BlackBerry users to the Sprint/Palm camp.

Released in November 2008, the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm was supposed to be RIM and Verizon Wireless’ answer to the iPhone. The hype leading up to the launch of the device even generated an "iPhone-killer" headline in the October 2008 issue of Time Magazine. It's true that 500,000 Storms were sold in the device's first month, but the true Storm was yet to come as users began returning the phones en masse.

Frustrated customers claimed numerous problems with the operating system and touchscreen interface, which was reportedly slow to respond to on-screen typing. The device's accelerometer was also prone to crashing the system as users attempted to switch to landscape mode. Recent software updates from Verizon seem to be helping, but the agonizingly slow solution to the Storm's initial problems may have tainted the device's "iconic" potential.

But it’s not just the slide-out keyboard and touchcreen combo of the Pre that may appeal to BlackBerry users. Palm’s proven history as a leader in enterprise devices could attract some dedicated BB users as well. While Apple has never been a big attractor of the business crowd, Palm was built on that market segment, and in its early days did quite well with its line of PDAs. In fact, Palm did so well with those early devices that it managed to attract a very loyal and passionate fan base recently awoken with the coming of the Pre.

Whether Palm chooses to advertise and develop for the enterprise crowd remains to be seen. However, the Pre’s slick multi-tasking webOS looks as though it could definitely handle the BlackBerry’s core suit-and-tie functions. And the Palm Pre, in tandem with Sprint’s Simply Everything plan, is, well, simply cheaper than Verizon’s BlackBerry Unlimited plans.

A Palm Pre with unlimited data, voice, texting, email and navigation will run $99 per month. A BlackBerry on Verizon with pretty much the same features will run over $150 per month. That’s a big difference, but it remains to be seen if BlackBerry users will see any reason to stray from their tried and true CrackBerries in the name of touchscreens and frugality.

Source: (www.wirelessweek.com)