The Palm Pre has passed through the FCC in the United States today. With a now official June 6 shipping date this isn’t exactly huge news, but it is one step closer for those that have been salivating at the thought of handling one since January. Then again, you may not get your hands on one right away. Sprint chief executive Dan Hesse said at an investor conference yesterday that the exclusive Pre carrier in the US expected some shortages around 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 Reuters. “We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”
Ouch, that hurts. If you do get one come June 6 make sure you bring $300 with you to the store–the store being Sprint retail outlets, Best Buy or Walmart. While the Pre costs $200 with a 2-year service contract, the pricing also includes a $100 rebate.
Also of note is a separate FCC filing from Palm for a Zigbee chip. Zigbee is actually an alliance of companies working to create wireless networking and control products based on an open standard. Often people tend to think of home automation when they hear the name Zigbee and I wouldn’t doubt we see some Palm webOS integration with this in the future.
