Verizon ending all promos for Palm Pre Plus?
updated 07:50 pm EDT, Mon March 22, 2010
Verizon to stop promotions of Palm Pre Plus?
Verizon sales staff will stop actively promoting the Palm Pre Plus at its retail locations before the end of March, according to a Verizon source speaking with the Examiner. When customers come in and ask about smartphones, or the Palm Pre Plus in particular, salespeople would reportedly pass on the webOS phone entirely and instead show them the Motorola Droid, the unnamed tipster says, adding that the Pre is a "nice device."
Why this is happening is not clear, but LA-based industry analyst Paul Mueller believes it's tied into several defective Palm Pres shipped on Sprint's network in 2009. The issue wasn't widely publicized but Mueller believes word-of-mouth spread and put the handsets on the black list for many users.
Whether the news proves true or not, it comes at a bad time for Palm, as the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus are selling in lower numbers than expected, despite Palm "ambassadors" devoted to educating Verizon sales staff on the benefits of the handset. At the same time, Palm sold less than half of the handsets it shipped this past winter.
