Bell and Telus Storms Delayed??

BGR just heard some rumors that aren’t going to please any of you Canadians waiting for the Storm to launch.  Apparently a pretty trusted source of BG said that Bell will delay the launch of the BlackBerry Storm 9530.  The launch for Bell was supposedly Dec. 15th which would meet the in time for christmas forecast they told everyeone.  Here is what BG’s guy had to say:

We are being told to take down all promotional P.O.P. (point of purchase displays) for the Storm and are being advised to expect a delay in Storm shipments. They did not say how much of a delay but managers are being advised to start making up sales through the current Bell line up for the Christmas season as we may not see the storm till after the Christmas rush. (Which if the last few years are any indication we usually consider the first 2 weeks of January apart of the Christmas/New Year rush)

We are also being told to stop taking names for “waiting lists” and that in the near future we may need to start contacting these current “wait list” clients to offer them new solutions.

Now the Telus rumor isn’t as solid.  There has just been talk that they were also going to be delaying their launch.  We know that Telus has been on the ad wagon promoting the Storm left and right for a while now.  They are even offering promo prices until Dec. 25th!  If both carriers do intend to delay, it could possibly be for the same reason; the only reason we could think of coincides with BG’s guess…OS.  Oh no.  I think that it is a good idea for all the carriers to release the Storm before the end of 2008, prefferably before Christmas so that their numbers will have at least a nice spike.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Is it just me or has every launch date for new BlackBerries flopped in the last year?  Here are the brand spanking new devices that didn’t make their launches, Bold, Storm 9500, Storm 9530, Curve 8900, Curve 8350i.  The only phone that did make a fairly honest release was the Pearl Flip 8220 on T-Mobile.  What’s going on?

via BGR