Dan Hesse: Pre supply still constrained, Android coming to Sprint
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse sat down at the Fortune-sponsored Brainstorm: Tech conference in Pasadena, California this week to talk about the future of mobile computing. And of course, the Palm Pre came up (would we be talking about it if it didn’t?). On the device, Hesse said that the launch was a success, but sales numbers were until recently very constrained by supply issues, not a lack of demand. And because of the initial limited launch, it’s going to take a while before they can declare the Pre a smash hit or not: “You won't know if we have a real hit on our hands until its been out three months, four months, five months ... It's too early to tell.”
Hesse also took up the defensive against claims of inordinately high return rates, taking the analysts to task for their speculation, “Most of the speculation I read is wrong.”
Lastly, there’s that other Linux-based mobile phone operating system: Android. Hesse commented that Android was not ready for prime time when it was released, and it’s taken to the latest 1.5 iteration and HTC’s fancy new UI for it to be up to snuff for Sprint. At least one new Android model will land on Sprint this year.
What did you Leave for webOS?
Clearly anybody who bought a Palm Pre was migrating from some other OS. So from whom did Palm poach the most users? If you were to ask the members of the PreCentral forum, a full 39% of them would say that they left behind a Windows Mobile handset. That’s more than any other mobile OS, even Palm’s own old-school Palm OS, which 28% of Pre owners used to use. Rounding it out was BlackBerry OS at 15%, iPhone OS at 6%, and Android, Symbian, and Sidekick each registering less than 1% on the meter. Ten percent of Pre owners used a different operating system, with most of those switching from non-smartphone handsets.
We're guessing a healthy portion of that WinMo segment include Windows Mobile Treos. Even so, it does look like, at least amongst our users, the Pre is managing to convert a sizable number of people to the platform.
A pretty graph and a chance for you blog-reading folks to chime in, after the break!
