Telefonica Spain nabs Palm Pre exclusivity?

Sprint has already locked up the Palm Pre as a Sprint-exclusive handset in the US. The world waits for the Palm Pre to bring the WebOS to life and hopefully bring Palm (NSDQ: PALM) back from the brink. Sprint (NYSE: S) is excited too, they’ve been busy telling the world how Palm is their soul-mate and all that. As for the rest of the world, new reports from Spanish-language newspapers point to Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) as Palm’s exclusive Palm Pre carrier in Spain, UK, and Latin America.

Telefonica Spain is reportedly set to launch the Palm Pre “before summer,” which bodes well for a near-term release of the US-bound Palm Pre. Sprint and Palm have announced that the Palm Pre is still on track for a 1H 2009 release of the CDMA Palm Pre, so the two companies have at least a couple months to make a Pre-summer (see what we did there?) launch window.

Telefonica’s O2 is said to be taking the Palm Pre-reigns in the UK. O2 will be the exclusive Palm Pre carrier in the UK, snubbing rival carrier Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) for the Palm Pre exclusivity contract.

Latin America will see O2’s Movistar subsidiary offering the Palm Pre in many South American countries. News of Palm’s plans to bring the Palm Pre to Latin America gives US GSM customers reason to hope for a GSM Palm Pre compatible with AT&T (NYSE: T)’s 3G frequencies. There’s a lot of 3G spectrum occupying the 850Mhz and 1900Mhz bands in Latin America, which are the very same bands you’d need to support in order to use a GSM Palm Pre with AT&T’s 3G network.

We’ll have to wait for official confirmation from Palm or Telefonica regarding any sort of Palm Pre exclusivity contract before we can put full faith in this rumor, but with multiple sources reporting the deal, things are looking good for Telefonica.

[Via: PalmInfoCenter]