Sprint vacation freeze locks Palm Pre launch in for May!
By Will Park on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 6:00 PM PST In Devices, Hottest Hardware, Palm, Palm Pre, Rumors, Sprint, Web OS
When wireless carriers go around freezing employees’ vacation times for an entire month, you can be pretty sure that said carrier is planning to launch a headlining handset sometime in that month. This time around, we’re hearing that Sprint (NYSE: S) has frozen employees out of taking any vacation time during the month of May. Seeing as how Sprint’s only headlining handset planned for 2009 is the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, we can pretty much rope-off May as the targetted launch window for the Palm Pre. In fact, internal Sprint docs allegedly point to May 17 as the initial launch window.
Sprint employees are just kicking off their Palm Pre training sessions, so a mid-May launch seems very likely. We’re also hearing that Sprint has two Palm Pre launches planned. The first, soft-launch will happen on May 17. The preliminary launch will apparently be used to gauage sales performance ahead of the official launch, which may be delayed until June 29th, depending on how well the Palm Pre sells in May.
This latest rumor follows on previous rumors that hinted at a mid- or late-April launch for the Palm Pre. For now, we’re looking to mid-May for the Palm Pre to finally go live!
[Via: PhoneNews]
’soft-launch will happen on May 17…. ahead of the official launch, which may be delayed until June 29th’
wtf, seems like there obsessed with the iphone 2yr thing. I can see them making a mess of this.
dan…believe me…i TOTALLY know what you’re saying…sprint has shown a HUGE tendency to end up getting in their own way (dude, so has palm for that matter…peas and carrots)…last year’s instinct launch WAY ahead of product readiness comes to mind (not to mention the futile, albeit cute, instinct vs. iphone pugilism)…
but…i will say this…at least they are aware of the value of a soft launch…letting the geeks like me who’ve joined the “alert me when it’s ready” list and google ‘palm pre’ at least three times a day looking for new info a chance to get at this device ahead of the curve is super-noble…
can you imagine jim jones-job and the hari-krishnas at apple letting an iphone off the reservation early? no chance.