Palm's airport stores not closing, because they don't belong to Palm

Anyone who was sent into a panicked tizzy over Palm's decision to close its retail locations just won a small consolation prize: those precious airport locations are here to stay. Turns out they're not owned by Palm, but rather licensed by vendor Airport Wireless; they might be rebranded, but their line and bold mission statement should both remain unchanged. So the next time you happen to be passing through from LGA to LAX, rest easy knowing that the opportunity to buy overpriced electronic merchandise from a variety of vendors will still be alive and well.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 7:00PM]

Unless they are selling drugs to newly-arrived passengers, I don't know how these stores manage to make money.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 7:40PM]

They actually have good prices on some things. For example anyone that has a set of Shure headphones, I got the best price (including online) at the one in Newark.

Granted some of the stuff is a ripoff and I have never understood why someone would want to buy some of the products on the road when you can't really use some of the features until you get home and charge it or add music.

As a semi-frequent traveler, I know I have spent a bit of money in there on forgotten foreign power adaptors, airline headphone plugs, phone chargers etc.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 11:08PM]

I bought a set of Shure i4c's in ATL around 2 years ago, and got a fair price. No one was discounting them, and I got the adapter for my 700W at the same time.
Half of the stuff I've bought there is business-related. Charger cables, adapters, etc. I expense it. It beats ordering mail order, waiting 2 to 10 days and paying shipping.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 8:40PM]

Supposedly, Airport wireless is a very profitable company. I suppose the high margin helps, but like most people here, I don't get how they they sell enough to keep the store open. I've never seen more than 2 or 3 people in line to buy a palm product there in all my travels.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 9:37PM]

People still fly out of LaGuardia?

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 6th 2008 10:29PM]

One great thing about Pittsburgh International is the requirement that stores there have normal 'mall prices'. Effectively, this prevents stores from price gouging due to convenience like they do in every other airport.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 8th 2008 9:15AM]

Now if an airline would move their hub to Pittsburgh we could avoid LGA completely.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 7th 2008 2:51PM]

am i the only one who laughs everytime i see this jpg when the palm story resurfaces? lol.