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Palm unveils Pixi, slashes Pre price
by Jaspreet Virk - September 9, 2009 - comments
The Pixi’s release is company’s second attempt in less than a year to broaden its product’s appeal and establish itself as a strong competitor to capture the fast growing smart phone market
New York, September 9 -- In a move to revamp its product lineup, Palm Inc. unveiled Wednesday a new smart phone called the Pixi.
Palm said that Pixi will be available ahead of the holiday selling season through Sprint Nextel Corp. The company did not divulge the price, but confirmed that it will cost less than Pre, a smart phone that Palm launched in June.
Further, the company also slashed the price of its Pre device by $50 to $150 to keep pace with competitors amid intensifying competition in the wireless market.
"The combination of announcing a new device and changing the price on the Pre show we're aggressively pursuing new customers to get them accessing the WebOS experience," said Katie Mitic, Palm's senior vice president of product marketing.
The product features
Like its predecessor, the new smart phone will have a touch-screen, full QWERTY keyboard and the company’s new operating system, called WebOS. It will also come with eight gigabytes of built-in memory and GPS navigation facility.
But unlike Pre, Pixi will be longer and slimmer. It will have a 2-megapixel camera rather than 3-megapixel in Pre and will sport small speakers instead of Pre’s single large one.
The Pixi will also enable users to gather contacts from Yahoo and business-networking site LinkedIn through the WebOS feature. Even a Facebook application will be released. It is yet not confirmed whether the application will come loaded on the phone or will be available through company’s online application store.
“It’s cute and it’s a lot of fun,” said Jonathan J. Rubenstein, chief executive of Palm. “Whereas the Pre is a little more serious.”
Palm hopes to emerge as a strong contender
The Pixi’s release is company’s second attempt in less than a year to broaden its product’s appeal and establish itself as a strong competitor to capture the fast growing smart phone market.
“This is a good step forward for Palm,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research firm based in Los Angeles. “It shows that the Pre is not just a one-hit wonder, but a family of devices that users can embrace.”
The company believes that a wide gap still exists between business smart phones and general-use cell phones and there are a lot of users who are tired of their general phone feature and want a smart phone. “A lot of our Centro customers came from exactly that, and so we see this a much larger opportunity for that market,” stated Rubenstein.
Like Apple and Research In Motion Ltd., Palm is also allowing outside developers to write and publish programs for its devices.
“We’ve been very methodically developing an incredible App Catalog experience,” said Rubenstein. “What we have accomplished is really terrific, but we are just beginning.”