Palm Pre shows up on Best Buy online inventory for $849

Well, something interesting popped up on the radar today, Best Buy, one of the retailers that will be selling the Palm Pre on launch day has the device already listed on their site under “coming soon” but what stands out like a sore thumb is the price tag, $849. Yes, that’s no typo, at least on this end. Obviously the price on the site is going to be the unlocked, no contract price, but at $849 that’s (exactly) $300 more than the previously released price. So, what’s the deal?

Well one, if the supply is indeed limited on the device, they could be in effect raising the price just to make more money off of them; something which probably instills unbridled rage at many. At such a substantial mark-up cost, it seems more like price-gouging than competitive marketing, and if this is the case, it’s probably going to cause a bit of a negative image of Best Buy and the already struggling Palm.

Two, this could be the actual price of the Pre. Disregarding previous numbers that could have possibly been wrong, this could in fact be the real price of the Palm Pre. This seems extremely doubtful, and would mean that if (and that’s a big if) people buy the device with that price Palm will be raking in money hand over fist. Fortunate (or unfortunately) phone sales are made under contract, and if that was indeed the price, Palm would probably never recoup the costs or even make a profit. So, I’m extremely doubtful in this respect.

Three, this is a mistake. What little hope I have left for humanity makes me believe that this price was just kind of put up there by an inconsequential someone as a placeholder and will be changed as soon as the phone actually becomes available for order or pre-order. I simply can’t fabricate such an outrageous price point or Palm actually producing such a ridiculously expensive device.