Verizon To Sell Palm Pre, New BlackBerry Phones

Palm’s iPhone competitor Pre got an unexpected boost yesterday as Verizon Wireless said Pre would be part of its upcoming device line-up. Palm is depending heavily on Pre to galvanise its business and regain market share from rivals such as Apple. Pre is also seen as key to helping stem customer losses at Verizon’s smaller rival Sprint Nextel, which is launching the Pre exclusively on June 6, 2009.

Verizon will offer Pre in ‘six months or so,’ company chief executive Lowell McAdam said during a conference webcast. Verizon Wireless said its phone line-up would also include a new version of the touchscreen-controlled BlackBerry Storm from Research In Motion and a new BlackBerry called Tour. Also slated are devices from Motorola and phones based on Android, the Google mobile system. “Over the next six months or so you will see devices like Palm Pre and a second-generation Storm on the Verizon Wireless network,” McAdam said. “You can expect to see us launch a steady stream of new devices from multiple vendors.”

Some analysts had worried that Palm was limiting Pre’s success by forging an exclusive agreement with Sprint, which lasts at least until year-end, as first reported by Reuters in February and confirmed by Sprint later. As a result, UBS analyst Maynard Um said Verizon’s Pre news was encouraging for Palm investors. But the analyst predicted increasing competition in the advanced phone market, saying that Motorola “could be the wildcard in the smartphone race” as it has the potential to be most aggressive on price. “However, visibility in an increasingly competitive market is still limited,” the analyst said in a research note.

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Um also said he expects other new Palm phones based on the same operating system as Pre. For example, Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T, said during a recent conference that his company would also like to sell Pre but he did not give a timeframe. AT&T uses a different network technology from Sprint. The comments come ahead of Sprint’s long-awaited June 6, 2009, launch of Pre and the expected announcement of a new iPhone from Apple in the week after that. Top executives from both Palm and Sprint have said they expect Pre shortages around the launch due to strong demand.

Palm said yesterday that the device would include a universal search service that will let users to search everything from their phone contacts list to micro-blogging site Twitter or Web encyclopedia Wikipedia. Palm said the device’s operating system, webOS, also allows Pre to synchronise with iTunes, Apple’s music software, so users can easily transfer music, photos and video to their phone. (Reuters)