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So How Long Is Sprint’s Pre Exclusivity Then–Seven Months?

Now, we aren’t typically the carrier that comes out and announces what we are going to be selling 12 months from now. Other carriers do that, and the media loves to speculate on what we are bringing to market. But what I will tell you is that over the next six months or so you will see devices like the Palm Pre and the Cousin on our network from Palm.

– Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam

When Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam claimed his company would be selling the Palm Pre six months from now, he was apparently as full of it as a dairy farm manure spreader. At a Palm Pre launch event in New York city (at the Palm Room in the Roosevelt Hotel, wink, get it?), Sprint CEO Dan Hesse dismissed McAdam’s claim as inaccurate. “They need to check their facts,” he said. “That just is not the case. Both Palm (PALM) and Sprint (S) have agreed not to discuss the length of our exclusivity deal — but I can tell you it’s not six months.”

It would seem then that we will not be seeing “devices like the Palm Pre and the Cousin” — whatever that is — on Verizon (VZ) before the end of the year, although we may well see them in 2010.

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  • ian lawrence
    He did not say he's have the Palm Pre, he said devices LIKE the Palm Pre and the Cousin. So if Palm comes out with a Device called the POST then verizon could have it in 6 months. Hell they could have it tomorrow if it existed. Sprint on has the exclusive on the PRe.
  • Point taken, Ian. But "like" in the quote above could just as easily have been used in the "such as" sense of the word.
  • darius arya
    The facts are Sprint will have the right to extend its Exclusivity at the end of 2009. No contracts have been signed with Verizon as of yet and Sprint gets a first right of refusal. This means Sprint might continue its Exclusivity beyond this year. I think they definately will extend it another year.
  • Sam Harrison
    nobody will buy the pre so why the hype?
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