Sprint and Q9c: EOL'ed or not?

We were more than a little dubious about whether or not the Sprint Q9c was really “End of Life'd” when we reported it on the 19th. After all, Sprint and Motorola had very recently released the Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade for the device and the only other device in the same class on Sprint's network is the Samsung Ace. The Ace is a perfectly good device (global roaming is always good), but it lacks the power, fit, and finish of the Q9c.

I heard from a Sprint rep at a store that the device was pulled because “there were too many problems with it,” but I chalked that up to just a rep needing to give somebody an explanation. Looks like I'm not the only one, though, as MoDaCo is getting similar reports from their users:

Thank you for your patience, Sprint is trying to get the Moto Q because of all of the problems with the phone.

Ouch. Yet another black eye for Motorola? We still don't know what's really going on here -- we haven't heard anything especially bad about the Q9c. Maybe Sprint just wants to find a way to put yet more Sprint-banded “buy our stuff” applications on the device and so they've pulled it in the interim. Or maybe, just maybe, they're trying to help out their Instinct sales by pulling the competition off the shelves (Update: looks like cadman had the same idea before I did -- see the comments here). Or maybe it's aliens. Yeah, definitely aliens.