Palm Pre shortage and pricing

With the Palm Pre being released in a couple of weeks, Pre fans finally have a release date, but unfortunately it seems not all the Pre fans may be able to get their hands on the Pre, according to a recent article on Reuters:

Sprint’s chief executive said on Tuesday he expects Pre shortages around the launch.

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Walkley said it was typical that a new high-profile phone would be in short supply around the launch time…

…”We don’t intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while,” Hesse said according to a Thomson Reuters transcript. “We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”

At a glance, this may be a tad disheartening that Palm hasn’t been cranking out phones in a last ditch effort to save their sinking ship, but there is more than one way to view this potential “shortage.” The big one is potentially, this is a perceived shortage by staff, who have thus far have been quite cocky that their phone will blow the competition out of the water. The other is that this shortage is fake and created to somehow drive buzz of the product, something that bothers me on almost a fundamental level; after all, you wouldn’t need to fabricate buzz for a product that’s fantastic, right? Either way, I recommend you die hard fans and early adopters get out their on day one to pick yours up before they run out of stock. If there is an actual shortage, intentional or not, I actually do believe they will fly off the shelves considering all the hype behind this device.

In some related news, the Palm Pre will be hitting Best Buy for a mere $199, the same price Sprint plans on making you shell out for the price, without a $100 mail in rebate on top of it. So be sure you stop by Best Buy first to check out their “shortage.” And if you’re really desperate and already have a contract, snagging the Pre upfront will set you back $549 big ones.