Filthy rich US shock jock Howard Stern is making a big deal on his radio show of needing a new phone, but don’t be sending him no touchscreen rubbish.
Howard Stern: celebrity tackles phone dilemma
Stern netted a $500m five-year contract to take his hit show from CBS Radio to upstart satellite radio company Sirius in 2004. Maybe he’s been too busy to update his phone since then, because he claims his phone is so old he’s embarrassed to show it off. It’s a Palm Treo smartphone apparently.
You might think it’s time to “Grab yourself a big canoe and head on down to Phones4U”, but instead Stern has dropped a massive hint to handset companies by ‘auditioning’ phones on his show.
Controversial as ever, he’s snubbing the iPhone crowd saying he needs a real keyboard. He’s got hold of a BlackBerry, but some fawning lackeys at Palm, which is struggling to keep up with the competition, have gone one better and are sending round a pre-release version of their big new hope, the Pre, to his house for an exclusive demo.
Despite getting to see the thing ahead of the IT press, Stern doesn’t sound overly impressed by the move. With brutal honesty he said: “They’re [Palm] going to show me the Pre and then take it away. They’re trying to build excitement for this thing. If people don’t buy this I don’t see how Palm keeps going.”
No pressure, Palm demo guy.
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