With the release of the Palm Pre on the horizon, heavy questions are being asked if it will have any effect on Apple (AAPL) iPhone or the BlackBerry (RIMM) Storm Sales? The most likely answer is no, because the Pre is exclusively for Sprint (S) in the U.S. for the time being, Storm for Verizon (VZ), and the iPhone is exclusively for AT&T (T). But what if the Palm Pre gets better than expected reviews and becomes "celebrity status"? Will it be able to steal the iPhone and Storm's thunder? Let's face it (and I am sure I will get some heat for this one), Apple sells a trend. The birth of the iPod was Apple's second coming. 100% credit given to Apple as I doubt the "i" craze could have been done better by any company. The iPod has also spurred Mac sales, which is helping Apple take market share away from Microsoft (MSFT).
Anyway back to celebrity status... What if the Paris Hiltons of the world suddenly had a Palm Pre instead of the iPhone, would it be able to gain market share better than people expect? My answer to this is yes, I believe if celebrities are caught on camera, making fools of themselves with the Pre in hand, it could increase the demand tremendously for the device. This is what Palm needs to sell in order to survive, a trend! In my opinion, my Palm Treo 650 from 2005 is a better phone than the BlackBerry Storm, but the iPhone will be hard to beat. I think if the Pre turns out to be a good device and "bug-free", it will give the iPhone a run for its money.
The Pre is expected to debut in June sometime, with a huge following. Palm is putting everything into this phone, and if it fails, the company will most likely be filing bankruptcy faster than Enron did, after it was figured out. If the Pre does better than expected, I believe it is just the beginning of a successful road for the company, as more phones will be released with Palm's new webOS.
If the Pre does better than expected, depending on which carriers will get the phone, it will most likely send Sprint higher as well. I know quite a few people who kicked Verizon to the curb, in order to get the iPhone... So it is possible the same thing may happen depending on how hot the Pre is and how long it is exclusively for Sprint. If the Pre is a hot phone as all the reviews (especially CES) show, Palm stock should be a buy. I am a little concerned Palm's stock will sell off a bit on the news (once it is released or date and price info is provided), but once results are released on how the Pre is doing, and if they are good, Palm should be able to rally on that news. I found it hard not to ride the Palm bandwagon.
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