I recently visited two local Best Buy stores. One is an older large-format store with a full furniture and appliance section while the second one is a new, slightly smaller-format store with only a smattering of appliance offerings and a greater emphasis on televisions.
I found the Palm section at the newer store unchanged from its previous location. The Palm PDA lineup saw all three models accounted for but dismally wedged between some PC peripheral overstock, hp financial calculators and a handful of cut-rate “digital diary” type devices.
The older Best Buy store was in the midst of a remodeling during my visit. I was pleasantly surprised to find a recently updated Palm area. This store (the location of the last known LifeDrive sighting) had seen its lone Mobile Manager disappear but in its place was an ample selection of the three handheld models. The Tungsten E2 was in its updated “Palm” packaging and there were actual demo units on display for the first time in several years. I haven’t seen a Palm device available for “fondling” since 2005, when Best Buy jettisoned PDAs from its cell phone and MP3 player department and relegated them to the depths of the calculator department. These demo units were unfortunately non-working dummy units but they were in good cosmetic condition.
I did notice a few oddities in the Best Buy display. The bright orange Palm logo was prominently displayed everywhere but, strangely enough, the display’s backing panel had the new Palm logo but in a bland bluish-grey reminiscent of the old Palm, Inc. logo. Even stranger (though commented on during my previous visit to Best Buy) was the fact that the E2 and Palm TX were selling above Palm’s MSRP! The E2 was priced at $209.99 and the TX at $314.99. I suspect that even though PDA sales are declining, this small discrepancy does not help matters. The small 5% increase in price establishes a potential mental roadblock for a consumer (ie, the old $299.99 appears to be cheaper than $300.00) and is out of place for Best Buy’s usually aggressive pricing policies.
As usual, no Treos were available in the wireless phone department, but a decent selection of Palm-branded Treo (and PDA in some cases) accessories were present mixed in amongst the cell phone accessories toward the front of the store.
So no major changes for Best Buy’s strategy or selection but while it was nice to see an overhauled PDA display and a full line of handhelds I really cannot fathom their questionable pricing strategy.
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