Best Buy Launching the Palm Pre In 2 Phases, Thanks To Shortages

News about the Palm Pre has really been picking up lately, but today I have even more sad news. Since Best Buy is going to have an extreme shortage of available Palm Pres at launch time, they will have 2 different launch dates. Phase 1 being on June 6 and the second phase coming in late July / early August. It's pretty sad news for all of us, and I'm pretty disappointed. This will probably be the case for Radio Shack as well. To make things even worse, take a look at this excerpt from Boy Genius.

Due to the low expected inventory, only 300 specially selected stores will have working demos of the Pre. The remainder of the stores will sell their entire inventory of the Pre and will not have a live phone on display. Inventory will be allotted to stores based upon their Sprint sales and their past successful launches of other high profile phones. The only good news in this launch guide is that this time of dearth is expected to be followed by a time of bounty in late July or early August when the inventory of the Pre is expected to increase. Take home message here: if you really, really want a Pre on the launch date or soon thereafter, you may have to forgo Best Buy and Radio Shack and seek out a Sprint store where Pre supplies are said to be a bit more robust.

[Boy Genius]