Once again, the Palm Pre is on sale for $100 in the United States, but not through Sprint.
Instead, Amazon is selling the smartphone at the discounted price, though a two-year service plan with Sprint is still required. If you buy directly from Sprint, you'll pay $150, and only after mailing in a $100 rebate.
Sprint told PC World that retailers can "set their own prices for devices," but didn't say whether the wireless carrier would match Amazon's price.
This is the latest of a few wacky Palm Pre price fluctuations. Last July, Best Buy set the smartphone's price at $100 for less than a day. Best Buy quickly called this an error and restored the price to $199, but not before some people took advantage of the offer.
Earlier this month, Sprint made a similar blunder, selling the smartphone for $100 and then pulling the offer from its Web site after 6 hours. The company explained that the reduced price was "put into the system in error," though it did honor the sale price for any purchases already made.
A day later, Sprint slashed the Pre price for real, but only to $150.
What is going on here? Clearly there's some sort of miscommunication happening between Palm, Sprint and retailers. But with three occasions on which the Palm Pre was sold for $100, it's hard to argue that all retailers shouldn't be selling the phone for that price. I think it's only a matter of time.
All of this sets the stage for a super-cheap Palm Pixi, the second phone based on Palm's WebOS. The Pixi is intended to be cheaper than the Pre, but if the latter costs $100, we might even see Sprint fully subsidizing the former. For an ailing Palm, that could be just the ticket.
