Hasta La Gadget!

Sprint has exclusive rights to sell the upcoming Palm Pre smartphone through the end of 2009, an anonymous source familiar with the deal told CNBC. That’s actually not all that unusual. Major cell phone carriers often strike deals to sell a brand new handset for about six months before its competitors get their hands on it. If the Palm Pre goes on sale sometime in the second quarter, that would be in line with prior Sprint exclusives.

Compare that to Apple, which has been reported to have signed a five-year exclusive deal for the iPhone on AT&T. So far, we’re not even two years into that, as the original iPhone didn’t go on sale until mid-2007. On the other hand, Sprint is currently third in the rankings of the four major carriers in terms of subscribers, and it’s the only major carrier to consistently lose large swaths of them from quarter to quarter. So it remains to be seen what effect this could have on Palm Pre sales, and whether or not Palm loyalists will jump to Sprint just to get their hands on the Pre.

Last week, Sprint unveiled more of the Palm Pre’s tech specs on its Web site.