An unexpected fillip for the Palm Pre? A fan-made YouTube!

Palm Pre

MARCHANDS €     Amazon mark...  289.99  Amazon.co.uk  314.99  Debenhams  369.90  Compare prices

Here on Digital Versus we identified problems with Palm Pre sales as far back as August last year and things haven't improved much since for the handset on the ultra-competitive smartphone market. Hell, Carphone Warehouse were even throwing in free flights for those purchasing the Pre back in January! Help might be on its way however in the form of a fan-made YouTube that's been gaining attention across tech sites on the net...

Palm results for the third quarter were pretty poor to say the least, with the company shipping just 400,000 handsets instead of the expected 600,000. Its share price has suffered enormously this year and net losses for the third quarter amounted to USD22 million. Palm has been finding it difficult to sell the Pre and Pixi models faced with stiff competition from the iPhone 3GS, the Blackbery Bold 9700, the Motorola Milestone (Droid in the US and contracted to Vodaphone in the UK) and other smartphones.

In spite of initially upbeat noises from exclusive UK Palm Pre provider, O2, it would seem that inventories are high and that Palm is going to need to help its supplier shift stock before cranking up production for the UK market.

The difficulties seem to have stemmed from the timing of the Pre release and Jon Rubinstein, Palm's CEO said recently, "If we could have launched at Verizon prior to the Droid, I think we would have gotten the attention the Droid got. And since I believe we have a better product, I think we could have done even better."

Well, help for Palm and its WebOS software seems to be coming from an unlikely source, in the form of a fan-made ad on YouTube. Check out Heiko Thies' work below.



> Product Survey: Mobiles & Smartphone

> Buyer's Guides: Our Pick of The Best Products