palm_preI just read an article that quoted analysts that stated Palm has sold 150,00 Pres since it’s its launch.  Other hearing that the keyboard is way too small, the screen and case are a scratch magnet, far too few applications are available, and not being able to get your hands on one until mid July, reviews of the Palm Pre have been mostly positive.

The question that I want to toss out is can Palm actually sell enough Pres to truly contend with the likes of the BlackBerry, the iPhone, and even Adroid and, dare I say, Windows Mobile devices.

50,000 Palm Pres shipped the weekend it came out and 150,000 have been sold to date.  Comparatively speaking, 50,000 iPhones probably went in the first few minutes that the 3G S was available and I am sure that Apple hit 150,000 iPhones sold well before lunch on the first day it was available.

I was talking to a friend about the Pre and they said,  “You can’t really expect Palm to compete with the likes of the the iPhone or the BlackBerry”.  I said that I guess not if Palm can only sell 5% of what Apple sells.  To be fair, RIM won’t sell a million new BlackBerrys in a single weekend either, however, when you add up all of the BlackBerry Bold BlackBerry Curve 8900,  BlackBerry Pearl Flip, and BlackBerry Tour devices that are sold on all of the carriers over the couse of the quarter, they will rival Apple if not come out on top in gross unit sales.  The same cannot be said for Palm.

I hope that the Pre turns things around enough at Palm for them to be able to effectively come out with other WebOS based devices.  The better Palm does, the more innovative RIM needs to be to stem market share from bleeding their way…