ThePre
, the latest smartphone from Palm, will go on sale in the US via
the Sprint mobile network for around $200 on 6 June.
It is a move that the firm hopes will rescue it from a two-year
sales decline that has seen it drop out of the top eight phone
makers.
A Palm UK spokesman said the firm was not sure yet whether the
Pre would launch in Europe. "I expect some people will be buying
them in the States and trying to use them on local networks," he
said.
The Pre is up against tough competition from iPhone,
version 3 of which is expected to launch next week, and the
Nokia N97,
which launches this month.
The Pre has a touch screen, a slide-out qwerty keyboard and a
new operating system,
webOS, that makes
connecting to the net a snap to run multiple applications like
Twitter and Facebook.
But the key to smartphone success is applications. Palm has to
persuade software developers that they will make more money writing
for webOS than for the iPhone, Symbian, Android, BlackBerry, or
Windows Mobile platforms.
In anticipation, Palm is planning an App Catalog for the Pre.
This will be modelled on Apple's App Store for the iPhone, which
Nokia emulated with its Ovi store.
