Want to guarantee yourself a Windows Phone 7 handset from AT&T on the November 8th launch day, but don’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn or fight any lines that may or may not (but probably won’t) exist? No such luck, Chuck.
For reasons known only to the Gods of Crazyville, AT&T says they won’t be offering up pre-orders for the Windows Phone 7 launch.
The initial word came from AT&TJulie, one of AT&T’s social media folks. In response to a tweet about how the Windows Phone 7 launch would go down:
It’ll be available in AT&T Corp stores and online @att.com/wirelss, sold on a first come first serve basis on 11/8.
“First come first serve”? Surely they don’t mean there won’t be any pre-orders, right? Wrong. AT&T has since confirmed that pre-ordering is a no go.
An odd decision, especially considering that they’ve done pre-orders for considerably “smaller” (from a marketing-money-spent standpoint) launches. Does AT&T not expect enough of a turnout to warrant taking pre-orders, or are they just trying to increase the odds that they’ll have some photo-friendly lines?
[Shout out to Windows Phone Secrets for spotting the tweet]