Take it for what its worth
I have some info that I got today, and some of it is encouraging to me. I have a buddy who manages Best Buy in the midwest and he showed me thier inventory system for all cell phones in thier system. It descends in alphebetical order as to how much inventory they have for each device to better prepare them as to when to get ready to make room for new devices and for pricing structure. Obviously I am only concerened with the Tour. It goes in alphebetical order but doesn't neccisarily move in exact increments, for instance if a phone was listed as "c" status it would be hard to believe that it was ready to be cleared out for a new device anytime soon, but could quickly jump down to "w" status, which is what he told me is "the next to last step before clearance" anything marked as "x,y or z" is being pushed as clearence and won't be restocked, as to make room for a new device. About 10 days ago the Tour 9630 was "c" status, today it is "w" status. He added , rarely does he see a device sit at this status for very long. The consumer can see this on the bottem of Best Buy's description and price ticket next to or below the device. All of that got me juiced up so I went to VZW store and my friend said that of course he had not heard anything new but he checked thier system and he said to me that nationwide Verizon has over 96k units left in inventory? seems like alot? He also said that he has never seen a device listed in thier Cellbrite system sit in there for a month without being released and that it is very possible (since the marketing fiasco with the original storm) that they could easily find out about the release at the last minute, and VZW would just drop-ship overnight. Lastly he said to keep a look out for the release of the 5.0 OS, cause "when that is out, the phone should fallow in the next couple of days."
That is all I have been told today, and I hope that it sounds encouraging? It does to me, but I could be wishing it to happen cause I only have till the 5th of feb for upgrade.