Hesse puts Sprint in their place about Pre exclusivity

Well the jabs keep flying back and forth about the Verizon and Sprint contract involving the Palm Pre exclusivity. If you haven’t been keeping up, basically Verizon said that (and I quote): “…you will see devices like Palm Pre and a second generation Storm.” Sprint fired back quickly though, stating, “We have the Pre through 2009.” I had previous speculated to why this even came up, and a possible answer (perhaps they are both right to some degree), but we now have some facts straight from the horse’s mouth, or in this case, Dan Hesse’s:

“They need to check their facts,” Hesse said in an interview at a press event here to launch the Palm Pre. “That just is not the case. 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.”

I have a hard time reading anything else but “we have the Pre for more than six months”. After all, if Verizon was right and the deal was shorter, he wouldn’t have said anything at all. This is great news for Sprint, but not great for the competition and many who were hoping to snag the Pre on other carriers. I was a bit apprehensive to begin with since the typical exclusivity on cell phones is typically at least a year, so non-Sprint customers may be waiting a while to snag a Pre. Even then, there is a chance this phone will never be officially be available on other carriers (is anyone still waiting for the first generation Storm to lapse?).