Palm Pre coming to O2

mobius42

O2 has scored another coup in the smartphone market:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/07/palm-pre-official-on-o2-and-movistar-in-europe/

It's official, Palm just kicked out a press release saying that the UK, Ireland, and Germany will have access to the Palm Pre exclusively on O2 while Spain's Pre will be offered exclusively on Movistar -- so it's all Telefonica, all the time. Unfortunately, launch timing was only narrowed down to "in time for the holidays" which is just another way of repeating Palm's European-launch mantra of before the end of the year. Palm also doesn't provide any prices and chose not to list the radio frequencies for the HSDPA/UMTS with EDGE/GSM version of the Pre. See the 1,260 word press release posted after the break that says almost nothing.

So now they have the iPhone and the Pre. I wonder about the effects these exclusivity deals have on competition but mostly I'm just glad this phone is finally coming out here! Germany is getting it in October, so hopefully O2 Ireland aren't too far behind.

CivilEx

There's a bit more info here (http://www.palm.com/uk/en/products/phones/pre/notify-new.html) and you can register your interest - Ireland is listed as one of the supported Countries

justsomebloke

I wonder how much they paid over the odds for it so that it can't eat into the iphone market and if they are going to actually try to sell it properly as compared to the iphone

Oafley Jones

Joe the Santa wrote: »

I wonder how much they paid over the odds for it so that it can't eat into the iphone market and if they are going to actually try to sell it properly as compared to the iphone

It's in their interest for O2 to have a strong competitor to the iPhone in their own catalogue. As far as i'm aware there is no revenue sharing deal with palm -unlike the iphone- and if successful could help with future negotitions with Apple.

mobius42

Let's hope that O2 don't create special Palm Pre tariffs. I'd prefer to be able to choose my own.

DeadParrot

The bad news is that Irish data tariffs will remain stupidly high due to lack of network competition