Originally Posted by jbg7474:
Very interesting, thanks! I wonder how they arrived at their estimate of Pre's sold. Your math from one of the other threads was somewhat persuasive, but it still baffles me as to why Palm didn't release Pre numbers if they beat 550k. Perhaps they felt like they didn't meet expectations if they didn't reach 750k?
I'm suspecting, as I've speculated before, that it has nothing to do with Palm and everything to do with Sprint. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that analysts haven't thought of this themselves.
I believe that Palm's contract for exclusivity and length of term is dependent on how many Pres Sprint is able to sell. If they don't meet certain targets in certain time frames then Palm becomes to free to offer their webOs line up to other U.S. carriers.
This would explain AT&T and Verizon jumping on the bandwagon when the Pre was first coming out to say that they, too, would eventually be carrying it or like-devices soon. Then Sprint asserted that they had (and watch the choice of words) "exclusivity for
at least six months." The "at least" was repeated by almost every representative from Sprint, not the least of which was Dan Hesse.
Further, I imagine that under the terms of their mutual Non-Disclosure Agreements, there was an inclusion as to have neither company disclose exact figures of Pres sold. This would be to Sprint's benefit so that the competition do not know how soon or close they might be to getting Palm devices nor what kind of sell-through they might have thus way-siding a negotiation tactic for the competition. Additionally, if Pre and additional webOs device sales were excellent while Sprint's subscriber retention efforts still were lagging this would further exacerbate Sprint'sr perceived weaknesses in the telecom arena.
Such a non-disclosure and exclusivity dependent constraint would also explain why new Palm webOS devices are already appearing in Verizon's databases even though they seem months away from getting their hands on any devices. They've prepared given there are probably normally known contract volume standards within the industry so they had to be prepared in the event that Sprint did not meet the sales goals in their contract with Palm.
I also wonder whether the rapid fall-off in Treos and Centros which are sold across multiple carriers plays any part in this, but that's more of an aside thought.