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Palm Pre to Go to AT&T and Verizon

As soon as Sprint's exclusivity is over

Jun 1, 2009 10:03 GMT  ·  By
Palm Pre expected to go to AT&T and Verizon as well
   Palm Pre expected to go to AT&T and Verizon as well

There are only a few days left before the highly anticipated Palm Pre mobile phone becomes available for purchase on the United States market on the airwaves of Sprint, which will have the handset exclusively until the end of the ongoing year most probably, and now we learn that more wireless carriers in the country would like to grab the device for their users.

Among those that are reported now to eagerly await for the exclusivity period for the Pre to end we can count Verizon and AT&T. It seems that the mobile phone indeed has all the potential that some analysts stated back in February that it should have, as it will go to a wide range of operators around the world, including O2 in the UK and Bell Mobility in Canada.

For the time being, there are no specific details regarding the ending point of Sprint’s exclusivity on Pre on the US market, but it is possible to see the phone available with other carriers as well starting the fourth quarter of the ongoing year or the first quarter of the next one. One thing that can be said with certainty is that AT&T would like to have the handset in its lineup, at least this is what the company's chief executive, Randall Stephenson, is reported to have stated recently.

What Stephenson actually said was that he saw “AT&T selling the Pre after the exclusive arrangement with Sprint expires.” According to the news, AT&T might indeed get the Pre, only that it will receive the GSM variant of the device, and not the CDMA one that will start selling on Sprint as soon as June 6 – this Saturday to be more precise.

The second carrier expected to start offering the Pre in the not-so-far future is Verizon Wireless, which stated recently that that it would carry the Palm Pre “in the next six months or so,” which means that the operator is also waiting for the exclusivity to end so that it would be able to jump on the handset. All in all, both the second half of 2009 and the next year will be quite busy periods for the Pre, but, hopefully, it will be able to perform as we all expect it to.