Following yesterday’s claims from Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam that it would carry the Pre six months after Sprint, representative James Fisher has confirmed that Sprint will be the sole provider for the Pre for the rest of the year.
This confirms speculation born from CES and CTIA that Sprint and Palm entered into a time-limited exclusive arrangement, though background chatter seems to suggest that the Sprint Pre exclusive was a result of necessity for both beleaguered companies rather than any advantage being gained by becoming a carrier exclusive in the vein of AT&T/iPhone.
Why can’t sprint have longer exclusive agreements six months is no time to really take avantage.
Hey,at least sprint gets 7 months instead of six if the exclusivity agreement lasts the rest of the year all the way to end of december. But like some people said, this is not long enough to help sprint. But making pre available to verizon and att is going to definitely help Palm if webos is as good as they say. Sprint should have tried to get a 1 year exclusivity agreement. But that is where sprint always makes mistakes, in its many decisions.
This exclusive does not, however, cover the Palm Eos, which McAdam vaguely made reference to in his comments. I suspect Verizon, like AT&T, may launch the Eos ahead of the Pre… and then follow with the Pre once Sprint’s exclusivity ends.
UR RIGHT SPRINT SHOULD HAVE THE SAME DEAL AS AT&T HAS WITH THE ICRAP! LOL! AT THIS POINT THIS TECHNOBEAVER IS STILL WAITING FOR THE SUPERIOR TOUCH PRO2 FOR SPRINT. COULD SPRINT PLEASE ANNOUNCE A DATE ALREADY!
I think sprint is doing the best it can with its 7 month exclusive on the Pre. After playing with one today, I think it will do really well for sprint and palm. With the touch pro 2, diamond 2, and a new blackberry, sprint will have a strong line up of “smartphones”. And by the end of the year sprint’s 4G network, with the right decisions being made, should be gaining customers. But with shortages looming who knows what will happen.
This was said to let people know they have until the end of the year before a crippled (vzw) and slower (att) in response to thier assurances for current subs on fence about staying because of the Pre
Yeah, its sad and shameful that verizon cripples their phones. If only they left the phones perform at full capacity. Then I might really think of switching to them. As for att, their network slows the phone down. As long as I’m in the states I will use the faster cdma network and stick with a company that doesn’t cripple their phones when it comes to memory or gps.