Sprint Nextel is ramping up advertising for the Palm Pre ahead of the device's launch, rumored for mid-May.

The carrier, which is looking to revive its flagging subscriber growth with the Pre, took out a full-page color advertisement for the Pre in the Wall Street Journal Friday, at a cost of $246,000. The Pre also appeared at the end of a Sprint commercial touting the amount and type of data on Sprint's network.

Print advertisements usually herald the impending launch of a new flagship phone. AT&T Mobility started running print ads for Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold about a month before that device launched. Recently leaked internal Sprint retail documents [1] indicate that the Pre may be launching May 17, though that is unconfirmed.

Meanwhile, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya upped his rating on Palm to buy, adding that Wall Street "underestimates Sprint's commitment to Palm's success and [the] strength of the [the] underlying smartphone market." Arya said he thinks Palm could ship up to 2.5 million Pre units in the second half of 2009, and 6.2 million in 2010.

For more:
- see this article [2]
- see this post [3]
- see this article on Palm's upgrade [4]
- see this new Sprint video featuring the Pre at the end [5]

Related Articles:
Video: Hands on demo of the Palm Pre [6]
Palm sales drop in anticipation of Pre [7]
Palm Pre vs. The iPhone
[8]Palm [9] responds to Apple's veiled threat of litigation
Apple [10] sells 4.4M iPhones in Q1, warns competition
Palm [11] reading: Will the Pre and webOS save Palm?
Palm [12] pins hopes on Pre, new OS
[13]