If there was any hope that launching on Verizon could be a major boon for Palm’s unit sales, Boy Genius Report has stepped in to throw some ice cold water on it. According to their contacts inside Verizon, both phones are now appearing in Big Red’s inventory systems, and Verizon has apparently only order 200,000 each of the Pre and the Pixi (so 400,000 total). Previously we heard that Palm had cut their Pixi orders for the quarter by 200,000, leaving them with 600,000 units, though we were not certain how they would be distributed amongst carriers.
For what its worth, Palm managed to sell just 573,000 units to end consumers last quarter, so while 400,000 more would be a significant increase, it also doesn’t speak well of Verizon’s expectations for the webOS phones – assuming the report is accurate. Unless Palm is having trouble producing enough devices, it does raise fears that there may not be a large push from Verizon behind the Pre or Pixi. Verizon’s marketing muscle was put big time behind the Motorola Droid and the phone is thought to have sold over one million units in a matter of a couple months [corrected]. With only 400,000 rumored to be available between two models we wouldn’t expect Droid-level results.