Samsung launched the follow up to the best-selling Sprint phone ever at CTIA last week. The Samsung Instinct S30 was announced and demoed for the public; it will be released on April 19th. This is not the best news for those that desire the Palm Pre.

If you think about it, the Palm Pre is the must have phone from Sprint. It’s going to bridge the gap between consumer and professional devices by offering a feature set that both types of users can benefit from.  The Palm Pre is going to be the best selling device from Palm and Sprint, usurping the Instinct without breaking a sweat.  That being said, why would Sprint release the Instinct S30, knowing the Pre is waiting in the wings?

Sprint hit a home run with the first Instinct. I have one, and I love it.  It works well, and offers enough of the features that I want for a great price. It’s only natural that Sprint and Samsung would create a successor to their most successful device ever. This is bad news for those that are impatiently waiting on the Pre. Sprint has to give the Instinct S30 a chance at success. They needed a new feature phone to replace the year old device, and they needed it bad. The Pre is a step (more like 5) above the Instinct, and wouldn’t necessarily be purchased by everyone who might purchase an Instinct. So Sprint pushed out the S30 to satisfy that middle market.

Doing this has almost definitely just pushed back the release date for the Pre. The Instinct is going to need a few weeks to work its magic a second time around. That means 5-6 weeks before Sprint launches the next device that will certainly kill the Instinct’s sales.  The Pre is going to be the only phone that anyone wants to walk out of a Sprint store with come launch day, and that means every other phone is now living in the shadow of the Pre. If Sprint has any hope of making decent sales of the new Instinct, it’s going to delay the launch of the Pre until they see a healthy penetration of Instinct S30’s in the market.

Given that we’re just NOW seeing advertising from Sprint, I have no doubt that we’re not going to see launch day for another several weeks. Palm and Sprint better use this time wisely to amp up hype for the Pre. The Instinct S30 bought you some precious time to finalize the Pre and pepper the internets/webs/blogs with ads.  The one positive thing in all of this: 5-6 weeks worth of saving up paychecks will certainly get you a Palm Pre and Touchstone charger.