There is widespread speculation that Palm and Sprint will use the tomorrow’s Wall St. Journal to announce pricing and availability of the Palm Pre. The NY Times reports the Palm Pre will go on sale during the first week of June.
But the season’s most compelling phone drama will start the first week in June, when Sprint will begin selling the Palm Pre, people briefed on the company’s plans said.
Sprint typically releases new phones on Sundays, leaving many pointing to June 7th. The Palm Pre is far from your typical launch. An alleged internal Palm memo points to a "lunch launch" on June 5th. A number of former Apple employees are now working for Palm, none bigger than Jon Rubenstein, who played a vital role in creating the iPod. There are plenty of reasons it makes perfect sense to release the Palm Pre on Friday, June 5th.
- This is not your typical Sprint release. A Friday release reinforces to everyone that the Palm Pre is different.
- The release date is going to be filled with questions from both new Palm Pre owners and prospective customers. Of course, we expect our Palm Pre forums to be jammed, but plenty of folks will be calling Sprint and Palm. On a Friday, companies will be fully-staffed to handle customer inquiries. Of course, if it were a Sunday, you can expect them to increase staffing.
- More eyeballs! Technology blogs, TV morning shows and other media venues typically have increased reader/viewship during on a weekday compared to a Sunday.
- If they were to go with Sunday, June 7th, they would run into Apple’s WWDC coverage.
Tomorrow will hopefully bring a release date, pricing and the advertising onslaught that everyone is expecting. Will it be June 5th? How about June 7th? If you played either in Palm Pre Release Date Bingo, are you feeling lucky? Do you have your camping gear ready?
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