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CNBC reported today that a "person familiar with the matter" has said that Sprint Nextel has exclusive US rights to Palm's new Pre handset until the end of 2009. This comes at the heels of Sprint recently posting a loss of $1.62 billion and 1.3 million subscribers, as well as a narrower-than expected quarterly loss. After the news, shares leaped up almost 20 percent, while Palm shares were down 2 percent for the day.

Officially, neither Sprint nor Palm have announced how long the exclusivity period would be for the Pre. If this is true, looks like Sprint may be recovering some of their lost subscribers, who will have to switch back to be one of the first to own the fancy new handsets.

Source

Late last week, Palm shares got a boost from Credit Suisse analyst Deepak Sitaraman, who pegged the company with an Outperform rating and $11 price target. For the May 2009 and Feb 2010 periods, he sees a loss of 92 cents and profit of 35 cents a share, respectively. Palm shares have already more than doubled since the start of 2009. Barron's Tech Trader Daily reports, stating:

He thinks Palm can sell 3.3 million units in calendar 2009, jumping to 6.5 million in 2010. He expects revenue in FY 2010 to more than double to $1.9 billion from an estimated $907 million in FY 2009.

Last week,  Palm Infocenter analyzed several of Palm's "partners in precrime" that were announced by CEO Ed Colligan at the CES 2009 presentation. This week, they discuss another five of the third-party team that Palm is assembling for the launch of their new device.

Part two focuses on Yahoo!, Amazon, MobiTV, Pivotal Labs, and Dataviz. Applications are built using familiar web technologies including HTML5, CSS and Javascript. Native C development will not be an option, at least at launch. There will be true multitasking, synergy with all PIM data, and applications will have access to the pop-up notification area for convenience. Below is a summary of the partners covered in this issue:

InformationWeek reports that social network giant MySpace was on the scene today, with CEO Chris de Wolf stating at a keynote that "MySpace is betting that its mobile version will gain traction and generate a lot of revenue". Their mobile user base has grown by a whopping 400% since last year, with now 20 million users accessing the site through a cellphone or smartphone. Earlier this week, a new version of MySpace mobile was confirmed as coming to Palm's webOS. (02/20)

PC Mag reports Opera Software was on hand today at the MWC, and when asked about porting their browser to the Pre, CEO Jon Tetzchner said "we'll see", and said he would write a version of Opera Mini for "any platform that gets any significant usage". (02/18)

Folks at Precommunity got some hands-on time with the Pre, and suprisingly, the device they previewed was a GSM version of the new handset. The device was handled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, although Palm has not made an official announcement for a HSDPA/GSM version of the device. In photos and a YouTube video of the device, the back cover is removed, revealing a Vodafone SIM card under the battery.

Looks like the Palm Pre is looking more feature-rich by the day. Just recently, Palm announced it is joining the Adobe Systems Open Screen Project, which is an industry initiative dedicated to enabling Flash applications on a wide variety of devices. Almost all desktop PCs already have Adobe Flash player, which is used to view a wide array of web sites for navigation, videos, games and other elements.

According to Bloomberg, Flash player is installed on 98 percent of the world's PCs. By comparison, only about 40 percent of new mobile devices use Flash Lite, and others have no Flash support at all. The iPhone is still lacking this key feature. 

The Independent, a British daily, has published an informative article on Palm's recent comeback campaign with the Pre. In it, they briefly discuss the history of Palm's ascent (and struggles), from the early success of the PalmPilot, to the competition with Blackberry, and eventually to the marketing tour de force of the iPhone that would overshadow the Treo lineup.

They go on to describe that with the Pre's arrival, which created headlines at the CES in Las Vegas, "chinks are appearing in the armor of the competition", such as the RIM BlackBerry Storm, which failed to live up to expectations, no new iPhone announced, and the Android generating mixed reactions, Palm could "become a big player in the mobile device market".

The article also alludes to the Apple vs. Palm debate, previously discussed in numerous articles. To conclude, they state that rumors are abuzz that Vodafone could be the first provider to get the Pre in Europe.

Get the full scoop here:

Sprint has updated their Palm Pre specifications pages. While a majority of the info has been available on Palm's site for some time, Sprint is the first to confirm data tethering to the Pre as an EV-DO Rev.A modem, to a laptop or other internet-capable device. This will greatly increase the functionality of those wanting to use their notebook computer while on the go, using service on the Pre to provide an internet connection. Supported connections are listed as including both wired USB and bluetooth.

The price to enable this feature on the Pre has yet to be disclosed. In comparison, the iPhone 3G does not officially support tethering, although some third-party applications can enable it.  AT&T has been rumored to begin offering Tethering for the iPhone for somewhere between $10 and $30 month, although it's still too early for details.

Also listed is integrated bluetooth 2.1+EDR w/ A2DP Stereo, support for MMS, and 7.4GB user-available storage (out of 8GB).