Palm and Sprint should send me a free Pre

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Palm and Sprint should combine to send me a free Pre. Because i’m some big hotshot? No, i’m just an ordinary dude. But i happen to be a an ordinary dude who has owned nearly about every Palm device since the original PDA. And i’ve also been on Sprint from 1998.

But now i’m just not that excited about the new Pre and thinking i might purchase a 3GS iPhone to accompany my blackberry. Doing so would (a) make it likely i never buy another Palm device and (b) migrate me from Sprint.
So if [my lifetime value to palm & sprint > the cost of a Pre] they should give me a device and tell me that it’s mine so long as i sign a two year contract. Instead they keep sending me opportunities to upgrade for $99, which isn’t moving me to action.
I bet neither Palm or Sprint has a system in place to make this sort of calculation. Also curious whether they are working together to identify the intersection of Palm loyalists and Sprint customers, since both of these companies are on the ropes, you imagine they’d want to get creative.
Customer analytics are increasingly sophisticated but still quite immature when you think about realtime optimization and pricing. Still lots of narrow-slicing left to do….

2 thoughts on “Palm and Sprint should send me a free Pre”

  1. Why no love for the Pre?

    I'm also a long-time Palm user, although I switched from Sprint to Verizon in 2005 when I was with a DC-based company (Verizon rules the Metro) and then to AT&T when I returned to Stanford (AT&T rules the Farm).

    My Treo 680 has been a steady, if unspectacular, device, and given my love of non-virtual keyboards, I was planning to switch to a Pre in early 2010, when (I think) it'll be offered by AT&T, among others.

    I'm not expecting the Pre to be perfect by any means, but I am expecting a much faster OS and a reasonably faster browsing experience. Any reason to doubt that?

  2. the feedback on the pre has been lukewarm which is why i haven't upgraded. I assume it's a substantial improvement on last gen treos, but nothing gives me confidence that it's a great device and that Palm has the momentum to improve its OS and recruit developers for the App platform.

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