Palm has made it clear that the US will be the inaugural launch-market for the Palm Pre and its accompanying Web OS. The CDMA-based Palm Pre will be launching as a Sprint-exclusive in the first half of 2009 (1H 2009), and should have a huge impact on our home-turf smartphone market. And, with both GSM and CDMA variants in the works, Palm’s CEO Ed Colligan has essentially confirmed that the Palm Pre will be hitting Canadian carriers in the near future.
It’s unclear which carrier will be getting the go ahead to carry the Palm Pre, but we’re guessing that there’s a lot of back-and-forths going on between Palm and Canadian carriers right about now. Who will win the Palm Pre contract? It’s impossible to say, but Canadian big-dog Rogers might be a good bet. We may even see the Palm Pre launching in both CDMA and GSM-guise in Canada.
“I can’t tell you that exactly. We do have a UMTS version and a CDMA version but either one of those could come to Canada depending on the carrier. Of course we’re talking to [Canadian] carriers. We certainly want to bring the product to Canada,” says Colligan.
US pricing is rumored to be around $400 on-contract, so it wouldn’t surprise us to see similar pricing structures for our Northern neighbors. Of course, we’d love to see a more heavily subsidized price-point.
[Via: MobileSyrup]