Sprint: Don't count on January Pre on Verizon

Earlier reports that Sprint had a mere six-month-long lock on the just-released Palm Pre are inaccurate, according to the network's CEO, who made statements to the contrary over the weekend.

According to a Cnet story, CEO Dan Hesse is quoted as saying reporters "need to check their facts" and that "both Palm and Sprint have agreed not to discuss the length of the exclusivity deal -- but I can tell you it's not six months."

The confusion seems to have arisen from another Sprint employee who stated, "We have the Pre through 2009," which many assumed meant that on January 1, 2010, Sprint would not have the Pre any longer. Verizon fanned that flame by making its own claim that the Pre would arrive on its network in "the next six months or so."

Exclusive handset contracts are a fixture in the telecommunications business, and most handsets begin their life on a single carrier only before expanding to rivals. The Apple iPhone is perhaps the most famous example of this, the proud owner of a reported five-year-long exclusivity arrangement with AT&T Wireless in the U.S.

Speculation now turns to how long the Sprint exclusive really is. Nine months? A year? 18 months? All fall roughly in the guidance offered by Hesse but everyone's keeping mum on the issue for now. Neither Sprint nor Palm are particularly powerful companies, so there's no telling how much time Sprint was able to wrangle out of the troubled hardware company.

Obviously Sprint wants to hang on to the Pre for as long as possible. The phone has so far been deemed a success, though limited inventories -- many stores had only a few dozen units allocated for the launch -- and a few big complaints have kept expectations somewhat muted. At the very least, one would expect Sprint would like to hang onto the Pre exclusively while the buzz remains positive, and ideally until the arrival of an upgraded Pre 2, which I would expect in Summer 2010.

So far, an estimated 50,000 Pre handsets have been sold. Anyone out there in Yahoo! Techland nab one? Thoughts? And for those of you still on the fence: Are you waiting for the handset to come to Verizon? And if so, how long are you willing to wait?

OK, that's a lot of questions. I'll shut up now.