Palm Pre Could Be Hard to Find Until July

Sprint is going to introduce the Palm Pre on June 6, but supplies of this highly-anticipated smartphone are going to be very limited until July at the earliest.

Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO, said recently "We don't intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while."

This carrier will reportedly be unable to keep up with demand for over a month.

Sprint promised to release the Pre in the first half of this year, and it's going to meet this deadline, technically anyway. In other circumstances the carrier might have chosen to delay the launch until more units were available, but postponing the launch of so high profile a product would be a public relations disaster.

Hold On Until July
The Palm Pre will be available at a variety of locations on launch day, but not in bulk. Some unconfirmed reports have said stores will have as few as five units.

Information leaking out of Best Buy says that the release of this smartphone will be in two phases.

During Phase 1, the device will launch and stores are expected to sell out very quickly with little hope of getting in new stock. Customers won't be able to reserve the device or buy more than one, and employees won't be able to buy it at all.

There will be virtually no advertising done during this period, as Sprint won't be able to keep up with demand that already exists.

Phase 2 is expected to start near the end of July or the beginning of August, when shipments of Palm Pre will start in earnest. When this happens, the earlier restrictions on purchasing will be removed.

An Overview of the Palm Pre
The Palm Pre will use Palm's webOS, the replacement for the venerable Palm OS. This will be a new, multi-tasking operating system able to wirelessly synchronize a wide variety of data with online services like Google and Facebook.

The Pre itself will feature a sliding keyboard as well as a multi-touch-capable 3.1-inch display. This device will also be equipped with 8 GB of on-board Storage (7 GB available to users), Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

In the U.S., this smartphone will be available first from Sprint, who will add its mobile broadband service EV-DO Rev. A, Sprint Navigation, and Sprint TV. 

It will cost  $200 with a two-year contract and a mail-in rebate, though some non-Sprint stores are going to offer it at that price without the rebate.

A Canadian version from Bell Mobility will be released later this year, while the GSM version for Europe and Latin America is also expected before 2010, and will have the 3G standard HSDPA.

A follow-up model called the Palm Eos is reportedly on its way to AT&T and Sprint.

Source: Boy Genius Report