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According to a source familiar with the subject, Sprint has the Palm Pre locked up for all of 2009.  The phone everyone is excited to see will be exclusive at Sprint for only six months.  What happens on January 1st, 2010 is anyone’s guess as the source refused to comment beyond 2009.

Palm showed off a GSM version of the Pre over in Spain this week.  No exclusives outside the US have been announced yet.  So Palm will be waiting out the six months with phones ready that can serve every carrier in the US.  Woo hoo!

Sprint analysts were seemingly expecting the exclusive to last shorter as the combination of the Sprints 6-month head start and a smaller than expected loss on the Street, surged the stock price 26.9%.  Sprint’s customer retention numbers were less than pretty: from Forbes:

For the quarter, total wireless customers declined by 1.3 million, including losses of 1.1 million post-paid customers and 314,000 prepaid users

Ouch!  It will be interesting to see if a phone can signal a carriers comeback.

Read: [Reuters]