Some dealers pricing some headsets very cheaply temporarily doesn't strike me as a good sign for WP7 but it certainly doesn't necessarily mean bad things for the platform or anything specific about sales.
It is more worrying when your executives admit things like this:
"In an appearance at the All Things Digital D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice-president for the Windows Phone program, said that at only a month after the introduction, it was too early to comment on specific sales numbers."
Microsoft knows about the rumours of poor WP7s sales figures. You would think that if they had ANY good news, they would have shared it.
Aggressively selling the handsets could be a great thing for Microsoft and the WP7 handset manufacturers, but if the sales figures stay low even with BOGOs, then Microsoft would have to buy RIM to stay in the smartphone business.
It's the holiday season. Of course there are going to be discounts. If you follow a couple of the links in the article you'll find that some of those discount were temporary promotions.
Having BOGO (buy one get one) deals wasn't a sign that Android was in danger of being a failure, but Motorola certainly was. Motorola desperately needed to have a hit with their models of the Droid so I suspect they practically gave them away to Verizon.
Some dealers pricing some headsets very cheaply temporarily doesn't strike me as a good sign for WP7 but it certainly doesn't necessarily mean bad things for the platform or anything specific about sales.