I agree that the Pre, so far, is a bunch of hype. Not being a media nut i'm not that impressed with the iPhone. I like a real keyboard, i like being able to replace batteries. THat said, having a peek at a product then dragging your feet to come to market with it makes me disinterested, too. Do I want to jump on the first release of a totally unproven product or stick with what I know and wait out the rough beta testing until it either sinks or swims?

The pricing, though, indicates that Palm has realized there are two business models to choose from: the commodity market (WalMart) and the skimming market (like Louis Viutton, Gucci, and other high end marketeers.) If you don't play the commodity market VERY well you'll go bankrupt in a dismal way. It drains your capital like a leach because you're working on razor thin margins and don't have much room for loss. The Skimmers are looking for the more sophisticated market where people have the kind of money to purchase your product and appreciate the differences between what you have and the competition has.

In the past, Palm has been VERY consumer friendly. But it comes at a huge cost to Palm. They have not invested in an OS in over 10 years and it shows in their products. What was once cutting edge is now a real yawner. The Pre can change that if they get outside developer support for the WebOS. But their placement in the pricing market is much like Apple's when the iPhone was released. You coughed up major bux to get an iPhone. Palm and Sprint are looking for the crowd that will really use the features of the phone and it looks like it's positioning itself to compete with the Blackberry Enterprise group for the business user where these kinds of service dollars are not big money.

Time will tell but Palm better get off the wagon and get this out there to the consumer or people will lose interest and stick with what they know. That would be a shame for all PDA phone markets as the lack of real innovative competition will cause a promising industry to dry up.