Sprint Keeps Palm Pre Exclusive through ‘09

Reports have the carrier keeping Palm's upcoming, highly hyped phone all to itself for at least the rest of this year.

Just as AT&T has been married to the iPhone for years now, a relationship that reportedly won’t end any time soon, it looks like Palm’s upcoming Pre will remain loyal to Sprint for quite some time. According to new reports, Sprint will be the exclusive carrier of the Palm Pre through the end of 2009.

Though the original press conference announcing the phone specified that it would appear on Sprint first, neither company made any guarantees about how long that relationship would last. They still haven’t, but an anonymous source cited by CNBC has Sprint keeping the phone through “at least the end of 2009,” which could indicate an agreement that goes even further.

Sprint’s stock price, which has been hurting recently on news of a declining customer base, rocketed up 20 percent to $3.25 a share on Thursday. It was helped along by both news of exclusivity agreement and a positive fourth-quarter report.