Why Palm's Pixi Might Be The Perfect Price Point For Youth
- September 10th, 2009
- 10 Comments
Yesterday, we linked to a USA Today story about Palm’s new smartphone, the Pixi, which they intend to market to teens/youth. With the constant news about youth oriented iPhone apps or the mobile versions of MySpace and Facebook, you might assume that most teens and college students already own smartphones….Not so. According to research from Ypulse Insights (yep, that’s the new research side of the Ypulse house), only slightly more than one in three (39 percent) teens and college students have mobile phones that allow them to download apps with only little more than one quarter (26%) who have unlimited data or Internet plans. This means…we’re still not quite there yet when it comes to U.S. youth and mass adoption of the mobile web, despite the ubiquity of slick smartphone advertising from Apple, RIM and Palm.
What phones are the majority of teens and college students using? LGs, Samsungs and Motorolas. Only 8 percent of our sample owned an iPhone, with the other 8 percent owning a Blackberry (speaks to the competitiveness of RIM and the appeal/familiarity with texting using a keypad vs. touchscreen in this market). The main barrier keeping this crowd (and really their parents) from purchasing smartphones? Price of course, with the recession only exacerbating the issue. Palm setting the price of the Pixi under $100 ($99) might finally bring us to the tipping point where teens awareness/desire for smartphones turns into actual adoption. [Palm has not officially announced the price of the Pixi, but an analyst interviewed in the USA Today article said he expects it to retail for $99 with a two-year contract.]
What do you think? Will the Pixi price point mark a turning point for youth smartphone adoption? Or will it take an even lower priced iPhone or Blackberry to sway American teens and college students….
P.S. We will be making some big announcements next week about Ypulse Insights and our new line of syndicated research. BUT you can actually check out what we’re offering right now (including the report with the mobile stats I shared in this post and more) on Ypulse Research.
For more coverage of the latest trends and developments in mobile technology for youth, check out the Ypulse Mobile Channel. Want to sponsor our Mobile Channel (hint: your company and link will go here and reach almost 5K daily newsletter subscribers)? Contact Dan Coates at Dan at Ypulse.com.
What gets me is that the Pixi looks almost more responsive than the Pre. I’m not sure if it is because it is a non-bloated demo unit or what, but this more compact design is going to win over not only the youth crowd, but almost certainly the Centro and Palm faithful. I own a Centro right now, and my decision on which phone to buy is still up in the air. The Pre’s slide out keyboard is actually a detractor to me. I favor the Pixi because of its customizable nature, but then the screen is just too small. I’d really have to see it in person, but I’d say it will come down to marketing, definitely. I’d like to see Palm set up camp at name recognized college campuses to do hands on promotion of both devices. I’d bet they’d win over a ton of college students. Only the small clique of geeks code in C++, but EVERYBODY with a tech background can code in CSS and HTML. It’s the PERFECT advertising battlefield that Palm would win, hands down, against Apple.
Isn’t the iPhone 3G 8GB available for $99 with a contract, making it the same price as the Palm Pixi? In that case, iPhone wins hands down with the Apps store and parental controls.
Good point, Dave. That happened in June. I wonder if youth care that it’s “the older iPhone model.” I would love to watch the impact it has on youth adoption (hopefully the research side of Ypulse can check back in on this question in 6 months or so).
Do you know what the cost difference is in data plans between AT&T and Sprint? (just found this that looks at the iPhone vs. Pre) I’m guessing that would be a factor as well. And then there’s the keyboard. For youth who are used to texting on LGs, Samsungs, Motorolas, the leap to touchscreen might work for some but not others.
The contract is more of a barrier than the initial cost. The cheapest AT&T iPhone plan is pretty expensive, like $75 a month. If Sprint can come up with a plan that’s closer to $50 with unlimited data and SMS, they’d have a winner I think. BTW, I think its a little weird to do a story about the Pixi’s price-point, when it hasn’t been announced yet, ya know?
Hey Glenn. I was going off of the USA Today article which said, “Palm won’t discuss pricing. Analyst Ben Bajarin of technology consulting firm Creative Strategies expects it to retail for $99 with a two-year contract.”
But to your point, I should have been more clear that this is analyst speculation vs. the official price from Palm.
[...] Why Palm's Pixi Is The Perfect Price Point For Youth | Ypulse Palm setting the price of the Pixi under $100 ($99) might finally bring us to the tipping point where teens awareness/desire for smartphones turns into actual adoption. [...]
I know you said many teens don’t have an iPhone but you seemed to ignore that the iPod Touch can download apps as well. I know many teens/college students that have a cell phone and the iPod Touch, so they don’t feel like they need a smart phone. Also Apple has a special if you buy a laptop you can get a free ipod Touch.
Hi JS—I’m not ignoring it (one of our youth advisors wrote about this as well) though I haven’t seen data on what percentage of youth own the iPod Touch. It’s still pretty pricey for most youth (separate from the laptop deal - and our research shows youth are buying more PCs than Macs right now). That said, I was focusing on smartphones vs. other handheld devices with internet access.
I am on a everything unlimited plan for 69.99 a month with sprint. The pixi is next for me :)
[...] months ago the Palm Pixi was mentioned as a low-cost app-savvy mobile phone that could increase youth use of smartphones, but it doesn't appear that that's happened. Many young people buy feature phones and supplement [...]