Recently, Palm announced that AT&T customers will have a new smartphone to chose from, announcing that the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus will be coming to the AT&T network. This is in light of Palm announcing a loss in profit of $22M. Having sold less phones than the pervious quarter, Palm is hoping that expanding their smartphone line to more than 80M AT&T subscribers will boost profits.
Many bloggers have speculated wondering why people would consider coming to AT&T as opposed to Verizon Wireless or Sprint for these phones. I don’t think this is a case of trying to lure new customers, I think this is a case of offering existing customers a new smartphone. Yes, I’m sure that people are more keen on moving to Verizon, but for customers who are set on AT&T, it just expands the variety of smart phones available to them.
Based on prices of other carriers, Palm has stated that the Pre Plus will be priced at $149 after rebates with a 2-year contract, and the Pixi Plus will be priced reasonably lower at $49 after rebates and a 2-year contract, which is priced competitively with other smart phones that AT&T offers such as the iPhone and BlackBerry. Palm has not yet released a launch date of this merge, but has said that it will be showing the two phones at CTIA working on AT&T’s network.
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