Why Orange UK really need the Palm Pre

I stood for a few minutes outside an Orange UK shop on Oxford Street this afternoon.

Fluck all.

Nothing.

No excitement. No joy. No ‘I-must-have-that’.

It’s a dire experience.

Try it when you’re next on the high street here in the UK.

Take a glance into the Orange shop. There ain’t nothing going on, but the rain.

Orange are missing a poster child to galvanise the influencers. Right now they’re simply leaking customers to the other main networks — because of the abysmal range of devices on offer.

Let me demonstrate.

The highest priced handset available on pay monthly? Nokia N96. Nice… but not cool. It does the job. It was reasonably cool about 6 months ago. It’s not ‘new’ and hip by any standards (apart from the DVB-H).

Next up? LG KF90 Prada. Touch screen. It’s a tellyphone. It simply calls, texts, and does a range of things — all highly limited by the imaginations of the LG team. You can’t *do* anything new with the LG Prada. Like add an application to it’s homescreen that plays fart noises every time you press on it’s icon.

You can have a Blackberry Bold. You can have an HTC Touch Diamond.

NOTHING in that list is moving my heart rate above resting. Yours either, right?

Exactly.

Orange is nailed when it comes to exciting devices. They’ve been nailed for a while. So nailed are they, that their retentions department is trying to keep its customers by offering them a £300 cheque to go and buy an iPhone. As long as they retain their Orange contract. Again, I kid ye not. This is STILL going on. Only last week, Jay posted this note to the story we ran a while go:

I have had a similar experience. My 18 month contract with orange (which I signed up to for the free PS3) is due to end next month and last month Orange cold called me. When i explained that i was waiting for the probable release of the 2009 iphone and would be leaving at that time they offered me a sony ericsson phone and a cheque for 300 pounds to buy an iphone. When asked about lack of updates and support he avoided the question…

Orange badly need a poster child to make them exciting again. To bring in the high-spending influencers who will take every opportunity to show off their Orange-branded piece of joy to all their friends and colleagues.

They should bend over backwards and get the Palm Pre exclusively in the UK.

That’ll set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Then we’ll have:

– o2 with their iPhone(s)
– Vodafone with their Storm/G2
– T-Mobile with their G1 (and successor)
– and Orange with the Palm Pre

What a choice!

Current rumours put the Palm Pre exclusively with T-Mobile UK. Heh.

That’s currently.

The other week it was 3.

And Vodafone.

We shall see… Irrespective of the final answer, Orange need something to liven up their UK offering.

Pronto.