Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based SaaS company, is planning to offer a native Palm Pre app later this year, according to Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff. I stopped by Salesforce’s office earlier today to chat about Marc’s keynote address at our upcoming Structure 09 conference. Salesforce already offers a native application for the BlackBerry and iPhone platforms. The native apps, Benioff said, offer a performance premium over pure mobile web apps.
In the past, many companies have offered Palm as an alternative to the BlackBerry. Even today, a large number of enterprise customers use a variation of Palm OS-based devices. It makes perfect sense for Salesforce to build a native application for the new Pre, which is a huge hit — or at least so Sprint says.
The company claims that it sold more Palm Pres than any other device on the first day and first weekend of sales. It would be nice if Sprint actually got specific and gave us some numbers, instead of issuing a vapid, self-aggrandizing press release. (Related: Palm Pre: 3 Things We Like and 3 Things We Don’t)
By NOT saying how many Pres were sold Sprint said a mouthful.
Selling 50,000 devices after =6 months= of unspecific hype to rabid early-adopter geeks (the only ones who even knew about the Pre) is not an impressive feat – hype a toaster with an LCD screen for 6 months and you’ll sell just as many.
It’s so weird seeing Salesforce offering a client-side application, when their whole model was started as a server-side setup being one of the so-called “utility computing” pioneers. As the clients get thinner, they’re moving away from the server-side model?
Sprint obviously sold a LOT more than 50,000 units – every outlet in MN was sold out the 1st day. The Sprint store I bought mine at had 100 units in stock and were sold out by 12.00 that day.
The problem the Pre has is manufacturing enough of them (guessing they can’t afford to do that). That and it only runs on the Sprint network for now.
Don’t understand why people (esp the iPhone folks) feel so threatened by the Pre. It’s an amazing little piece of technology.
My name is Brian, and I just got my Pre on Saturday by a stroke of sheer luck… They “Found” 10 extra units in the back room when everywhere else was sold out.
I LOVE this phone, but I’m getting a little tired of hearing about how much better the iPhone is by Apple fans who haven’t even touched the Pre.
Yes, the iPhone is nice and all that, but come on.. let us enjoy our phones in peace. There’s no need to tell us that our phone sucks when we just laid 3-400 bucks down on the counter for it.
I hang out at http://www.PalmPreForum.org a site made for all Palm Pre owners.