Christmas came early for some as consumers flocked to stores over the weekend to buy the new Palm Inc.  Pre smartphone.

 

The Pre reportedly sold out within hours at some stores after Sprint Nextel Corp. released the touch- screen phone on Saturday, Bloomberg (News - Alert) said. Some stores were out of stock, others had limited supplies of the hot new smartphone, which features a new operating system called webOS and physical keyboard.

                                               

“I’m not finding the Pres. They’ve sold out everywhere,” Jennifer Fritzsche, an analyst at Wachovia Securities Inc., told Bloomberg.  “It can actually help them because they’re creating more of a buzz.”

 

The $200 device, shown at right, rolled out nationwide on June 6 on the Sprint (News - Alert) Network in the U.S., TMCnet reported. Officials with the financially struggling company are expecting the devices to sell quickly. Sprint officials declined to say how many stores sold out of the phones. Analysts estimated stores would sell between 50,000 to 200,000 devices as a result of the weekend launch.

 

Similar to Google's new Android phone operating system, and the modern BlackBerry (News - Alert) models from Research in Motion, the Pre is design to do much more than make phone calls, send and receive messages, and browse the Web, TMCnet reported. It's a platform, like a PC, designed to run a variety of sophisticated third-party programs, or apps, from social-networking gateways to games to business tools.

 

To spur sales, Sprint reportedly held exclusive sales events around the country on June 5, where invitees were allowed to buy the Pre earl, according to The Washington Post. For instance, in Seattle, Sprint served drinks and appetizers, hired a DJ and offered valet parking for the cramped lot, the report said.

 

Palm is relying heavily on the Pre to boost its own business in an attempt to steal market share from competitors, including Apple (News - Alert). The smartphone is expected to be Sprint's “flagship” handset. And in many ways, the Palm Pre is being portrayed as Sprint’s answer to Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Palm hired retired iPod chief Jon Rubinstein in 2007 to develop the Pre, according to Bloomberg.

 

While Sprint has the exclusive launch of the Pre, competition among wireless carriers is already starting to heat up. As TMCnet recently reported, Verizon Wireless will offer the Palm Pre within the next six months, a possible blow to Sprint as customers may wait for the device to go to Verizon's network before buying it.

 

But the question remains how long Palm can keep the momentum going. The Pre won’t be the only newcomer to the market. Apple was slated to unveil a new iPhone device later today at the company’s annual developers’ conference.

 

The Pre is the latest smartphone to hit the growing industry. Overall, smartphones accounted for 23 percent of U.S. phone sales last quarter, up from 17 percent a year earlier, according to research firm NPD Group (News - Alert) Inc.