Wherever the Pre goes, the Pixi typically likes to follow, which makes it pretty interesting to see that Vodafone Spain will be launching Palm’s new GSM flavor of the Pixi Plus on the 10th of this month without any sign of its Pre Plus sibling. That’s a marked departure from the line Vodafone and O2 have both been taking in other markets, so it makes you wonder: does Vodafone think that the Pre Plus won’t sell well here (it already offers the Pre), is there some firmware issue holding back the localized version, or is there some other mysterious conspiracy brewing altogether? At any rate, follow the break for Palm’s press release.
HP announcing that it’s going to buy Palm in a $1.2b all-cash transaction certainly took everyone by surprise, but in many ways the deal makes perfect sense. HP is a gigantic player in the tech industry but has no appreciable presence in rapidly-growing mobile space, and Palm — well, you should know how we feel about Palm by now. Even still, we can’t say we were expecting this one, and it looks like most of you weren’t either — HP only got two percent of the vote in our “who should buy Palm” poll, while Engadget (that’s us!) got… fourteen percent. Oops.
But now that we’ve had a day to wrap our heads around the news and think about what Palm and HP said to us last night and to analysts on the conference call announcing the deal, we think we’ve got a pretty good set of educated guesses on how things might shake out over the next few months. Read on!
This doesn’t really come as a surprise, but it’s welcome news regardless. Sprint is now offering the Palm Pixi free with a two-year contract on its website. The deal isn’t to be had in retail stores quite yet, but we assume that’s also in the cards as well. The Pixi — which has a slower processor than the Pre and lacks WiFi — is a handset we always thought was destined for the zero dollars on contract scheme, so like we said, we’re not surprised. Regardless, if you’ve been wanting a Pixi but couldn’t stand the idea of laying out any cash for it, well, now’s your chance.
So it looks like Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal have talked to enough store clerks and Sprint reps today to confirm that Radio Shack is definitely dropping the original Palm Pre and Pixi from its in-store lineup. For what it’s worth, Sprint says that “this is in line with Radio Shack’s normal product planning process — there is a designated amount of space in stores for handsets and they work to keep the line up of devices as current as possible,” and we actually tend to believe that story since the phones (the Pre in particular) are getting awfully long in the tooth and we wouldn’t blame the retailer for trying to cycle in some fresh stuff. The bigger question is whether the move indicates that Palm has some hot new gear for Sprint around the corner; if not, this gives Palm one less avenue for sales at a time when it needs all the help it can get, especially since you won’t find these guys hawking Verizon’s versions.
Just a few days after earning its all-important GFC wings, the European flavor of Palm’s Pixi Plus has caught a jet plane over to the good ol’ US of A where it’s picking up FCC approval — you know, just in case an owner or two ends up deciding to spend some time in the States. Model number P121UEU (as opposed to the AT&T variant, the P121UNA) now has the full blessing of the boys and girls at the Feds — so when you pick up a Pixi Plus from your O2 shop on the next few weeks, take comfort in the knowledge that you won’t be Tased, tackled, and placed under arrest for attempting to use one on American soil. That’s a good thing, we’d reckon.
Palm’s news activity doesn’t seem like abating any time soon, as the company has just made the Deutsch arrival date for its Plus-ified phones official as April 28. It matches earlier speculation about late April, but also — very importantly — introduces a new carrier options for our Teutonic brethren in the form of Vodafone. Formerly locked in with Telefonica (whose local representative is O2), Palm seems to have finally seen the error of its ways and started offering choice as a side dish to its delectable WebOS main course. So, forget about who’s buying the company, will you be buying its phones?
There’s a lot of Palm fans out there. Even more so, there’s a lot of webOS fans out there. And yes, there’s even a few Palm Pre and Pixi device fans out there. There’s no way of getting around that, ladies and gentlemen. Just like there’s iPhone and Android fans. They exist, and their voices are pretty loud. But that’s not going to stop the truth from barreling forward. And, the truth is, sadly, that Palm isn’t doing too hot. So, obviously, there’s all sorts of talk about Palm being bought, acquired, or otherwise gobbled up by some other company. Today’s no different.
While there’s been all sorts of rumors out there, like RIM or Google buying up Palm, of the more recent findings we’ve heard Lenovo might have some interest in purchasing the company. Right now though, there are grumblings of HTC staking some interest in the house that built webOS. According to the report, Peter Chou — CEO of HTC — has been sitting down in some high-interest meetings at CTIA, discussing how the smaller phone manufacturer could fit into their company profile, and future plans.
While HTC is keeping mum on the whole ordeal, it sounds like Jon Rubinstein — CEO of Palm — isn’t being so quiet anymore. He has apparently come forward and said something along the lines of: “If it’s reasonable, we’ll consider it.” That basically comes down to if HTC, or any other company for that matter, comes to the table and brings a reasonable offer to Palm, the board of directors will have a sit-down and pow-wow about getting acquired. It wouldn’t be hard for HTC, as Palm is currently worth a tenth of HTC, and therefore HTC could very well just purchase Palm with “some” cash. Is it worth the money they’d have to invest in bringing up Palm from the depth? They would get their hands on upwards of 1,600+ patents for their upcoming smartphones, so maybe it would be.
Time to get those speculative juices flowing again. Pre Central have unearthed the above O2 Germany promotional poster displaying a Palm Pixi stood in front of such smartphone luminaries as Sony Ericsson’s X10 and Motorola’s Milestone. Given that the Pixi has yet to make the hop over the Atlantic, their supposition is that we’re looking at its Plus variant and that this early flier is indicative of a soon-ish release for the Euro-bound Plus devices from Palm. Can we be any more specific than that? Why yes we can, thanks to Laurent Guyot, a French PR chap, who indicates an April 27th launch date for the Pre and Pixi Plus on the SFR network. Put as much trust into this info as you feel appropriate, though it does look like a resoundingly logical time to get these handsets out into eager European hands.
According to a report from Advertising Age, Palm has mercifully, finally, really parted ways with its ad agency, Modernista — the house responsible for some of our leastfavoriteads ever. If you need a memory jog, here’s them telling the world that they loved creeping people out with Palm ads. The AdAge article says that the company is currently in talks with various other ad shops, though there’s no clear word on who that new team will be, or when we’ll see the fruits of their labor. We don’t have much to add to this in commentary except to say that this is probably the second smartest thing Palm has done in a span of seven days — the first was striking that amazing deal on Verizon for a super-cheap Palm Pre Plus along with free Mobile Hotspot service. Now, we can look forward to a future where our children won’t cower in fear when they see a Palm ad on television, and we can sleep at night without the image of that pale woman burned into our minds. Of course, now that we’ve seen it, we can never un-see it.
It doesn’t appear to do anything groundbreaking like overclock your Pre, but it looks like the webOS 1.4.1 update is now starting to trickle out to at least a few lucky users. According to PreCentral, one of the first reports to come in was from a Pre user who also happened to be one of the first to get the webOS 1.4 update while he was in Vietnam, and has now managed to snag the 1.4.1 update while residing in Holland. That was later followed up with a second report from a Sprint customer in Washington, but things seem to have been relatively quiet since them. Still no official word from Palm either, but the update does seem to be as minor as the number revision suggestions, with it weighing in at just 6MB. Receive yours yet? Let us know in comments.
Update: So that’s what the update does — according to Recombu, the update should allow European webOS users to finally spend their hard-earned quids and Euros on paid apps. PreCentral additionally reports that O2 Germany customers can now download the Mobile Hotspot app. Cheers!
Update 2: We’re getting a 1.4.1.1 10mb patch on our Sprint Pre as we speak, while a list of changes has arrived on Palm.com with one notable difference — the old NFL Mobile App has been renamed Sprint Football Live — but otherwise it appears to be the same. Meanwhile the word on PreCentral is that Verizon customers may be in for a wait of up to a few weeks for their own update, so slowing the pace of update checks to just once every 5 minutes would appear to be a reasonable course of action.
