Sprint CEO: We Will Sell No Pre Before Its Time
by John Paczkowski
Posted on March 3, 2009 at 3:00 AM PT
Sprint will release Palm’s (PALM) new Hail Mary handset, the Pre, when it’s good and ready, and not a moment before. This according to Sprint (S) CEO Dan Hesse, who says the company won’t rush the phone to market no matter how desperate it gets (and its new $125 referral program would seem to suggest it’s getting pretty desperate). “The guys at Palm are working 24/7 and we’re working 24/7 to bring it out as soon as we can, but we’re not going to bring it out until we’re really confident that the launch is going to be really successful in terms of how it operates,” Hesse told RCR Wireless News. “Of course to be able to produce the devices we want to make sure that there’s enough. Clearly it’s going to be a device that’s going to be in high demand and it is going to be in shortage no matter when we launch it, but we don’t want it to be too early where there’s only a handful of Pres in the whole country. We want to make sure that we can also have production ramped up at a reasonable level before we launch the product.”
Comments
It makes perfect sense for the Pre’s premiere to be introduced with the most efficacy possible. Based on my extrapolations this is going to be the biggest bang since the iPhone was introduced. I don’t know a person in my college milieu that hasn’t indicated their desire for a Palm Pre. A lot of people I know are holding off on their next smart phone purchase in hopes of purching the Pre. What surprised me is the number of iPhone users that were willing to part with their phone in exchange for the Pre. If this is any indication of what is looming, I just hope we don’t have to line up at 3am outside a Sprint store. I hope that Sprint gives their loyal customers preferential treatment.
Posted by darius arya at March 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am