This is interesting. PreThinking has come across a few Twitter updates from Jim Van, who claims to be a Palm Pre beta tester. Some tweets of his today indicate that Palm has set April 30 for a Pre release date with Sprint. It’s tough to tell if a rumor like this is true or not, but Kevin Tofel from jkontherun points out that Van’s Twitter profile links to Logicomm, an IT support company that provides services to a variety of Fortune 500 companies. Not really the type of person who would carelessly spread an untrue rumor for kicks I’m guessing. Even if Palm wanted to kick up a little marketing buzz, I don’t think the company would look to its outside IT support.
Palm won’t be displaying at CTIA in the coming week, and although Sprint will be, I think that pretty well rules out a launch there. Furthermore, we’ve already heard that the Palm Pre is expected to launch in May by analysts, and there is no way Palm will launch the Pre close to, or after, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Especially with rumors that a new iPhone will debut there and Steve Job could be returning to give a keynote.
Putting all the pieces together leads me to believe that Palm has in fact set April 30 as its target release date. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll launch April 30, but I think between then and mid-May is all but guaranteed.
