You know what’s never a good sign? When a “hot” product has prices slashed after barely a month on the market. As such, people took notice this weekend when the HTC First was slashed in price to $0.99 with no fanfare.
Now, there are rumors that this is just the first stage. AT&T reached out to BGR about the rumor that the First is a dismal failure that will soon be shelved and have stated, “As mentioned previously, we do pricing promotions all the time and have made no decisions on future plans.” That’s a bit boilerplate. The price slash on the First came with no announcement, and the claims from BGR that salespeople simply have no interest in moving the unit sounds very much like what killed the Pre Plus on Verizon. In fact, even if AT&T corporate doesn’t kill the First, retail channels can do that effectively enough in an unofficial capacity.
I’m not a big fan of retailers trying to talk people out of buying the product they want, but in the case of the First, I may be on the retailer’s side. After all, if you can download Home to any Android device, why bother paying a premium for outdated hardware to run it on? It’s such an obvious question that one has to wonder how no one at AT&T or Facebook thought of it.
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