May 17th? June 7th? Two of the dates being touted around online for the launch date of the Palm Pre. According to the latest rumour I was sent (according to the Boy Genius report), Best Buy will have a trial launch commencing June 7th - the day before the rumoured announcement of the next generation iPhone.

To me, this strategy seems flawed. Firstly, why would Sprint want to have the first devices available in Best Buy and not their own stores? Then there is the issue of the number of Pre's that will be made available - only 4,500 if this report is to be believed. Best Buy has anywhere between 1,000 and 1,500 stores in the US - so an average of 3-4 devices per store. Yes, some of the bigger stores may be given more. But if the report is correct, then every store will have at least one Pre. We have seen the buzz created by limited releases in the past. When the Apple iPhone was launched, there were queues of 200+ people wanting to get hold of one.

From what I hear, a lot of people are also interested in getting hold of the Pre. If only 4,500 are released on June 7th, I can't imagine we will see queues of people like we saw outside Apple or AT&T stores in 2007 or 2008. If you know that only a limited number are available and you saw a line of just 20 people outside a shop, would you join the queue? I doubt I would.