The Palm Pre has been a great success for Palm and their brand-spanking-new WebOS. With 87% overall satisfaction rates, the Palm Pre (well, really, the WebOS) has proven that it has what it takes to play with big-dogs in the smartphone space. The iPhone and Android are a bit more popular at this point, but that might change once Palm launches their monoblock Palm Eos (codename: Pixie) to the masses. The Palm Eos would offer WebOS hopefuls an alternative form-factor to the Palm Pre’s slider design. Unfortunately, a new rumor has the Palm Eos delayed until 2010. Looks like all that rumor of the Palm Eos being delayed might have some teeth to it. Sadly, that means we won’t see WebOS coming to AT&T by the holiday shopping season.
“We think that the Pixie, which we believe is being geared for AT&T and has a different form factor than the Pre, is not likely to be available for the 2009 holiday season,” Morgan Joseph Analyst Ilya Grozovsky noted to clients. Grozovsky also mentions that his checks have indicated that Palm Pre sales have dropped to 100,000 units in July, compared to 200,000 units shipped in June. If sales slump any more, we could see the Palm Pre price dropping a bit in August.
Of course, that would also be a great time to launch a WebOS follow-up in the Palm Eos. A Fall launch of the Palm Eos would be nice – 2010 might be a little too far off for WebOS to keep its foothold in the smartphone market. Launch schedules being what they are, we’re not going to bet one way or the other.
Update:
DigiTimes is reporting that the GSM/HSPA Palm Eos is still on track for volume shipments in October 2009, as previously rumored. The rumors of the Palm Eos being delayed until 2010 could be linked to a CDMA/EVDO variant of the Palm Eos being manufactured by Compal Communications.
[Via: MobileBurn]