Weekend Wrap Up

This weekend, Palm made three important moves, not that anyone noticed with iPhonemania 2.0 in full swing.

Electric Blue Centro, Temporary Price Cut

On Friday, Palm introduced a new electric blue Centro on the AT&T wireless network. If you are following along on your scorecards, AT&T now has three colors to choose from: obsidian black, glacier white, and now electric blue. To entice even more people to chose Centro, AT&T has lowered the price to $69.99 when you sign up for a qualifying two-year service agreement. That is great news for anyone looking to jump on the smartphone bandwagon!

You can purchase an AT&T Centro either online from the Palm or AT&T website, or from any AT&T retail outlet. For more details, visit the Palm Centro website.


Sprint Begins Selling the Palm Treo 800w

At long last the new Palm Treo 800w is available! It has a great looking case and offers several new built-in features previously unavailable on any previous Palm smartphone.

Just some of the new features include Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1; a 320x320 touch screen display, a 2.0MP camera, and built-in Wi-Fi and GPS radios. The new Treo retails for $599, however, when you sign up for a qualifying service plan, after instant and mail-in rebates, the 800w sells for $249.99. A handsome price for what could be a very nice phone.

On Sunday night, Palm has yet to issue a press release or update their website and online store. Look for more details come Monday morning.


Oh Palm, sigh…

Working with AT&T to bring out a new Centro, if only in color, and putting a price cut in place was the right thing to do. And launching the much-anticipated Treo 800w on Sprint was another positive step forward.

Yet, once again, Palm’s marketing department show how inept they are. Launching two new phones and introducing a price cut during the same weekend that Apple was rolling out their new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software was just poor planning.

John Paczkowski from the D: All Things Digital website, has the perfect quote from Charlie Wolf who is an analyst at Needham & Company. The quote reads:

“They took the wrong day to do it,” said Charlie Wolf, a wireless analyst at Needham & Co. “It’s going to be drowned out by the hoopla around the iPhone.”

I truly hope that Palm learns from this mistake, and doesn’t start talking publicly about their Palm OS II/Nova plans and/or devices during the same week that Apple is rolling out new products at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco come January 2009. Palm needs to get out in front of Apple, or get behind them. Just don’t go toe-to-toe with them.

Palm Introduces the AT&T Centro

Palm has officially taken the wraps off of the rumored white AT&T Palm Centro consumer-oriented smartphone.

With the exception of the new GSM cellular radio and AT&T specific software, such as Push To Talk, the new GSM AT&T Centro is expected to be very similar in product specifications as the previously release Centro smartphones from rival wireless carrier Sprint and the recently announced unlocked GSM Centro that will begin selling across Europe shortly.

"Centro offers customers more choices to stay in touch with friends, family and co-workers by using voice, text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail or the Web. Featuring a color touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, Centro is the first Palm OS® product to launch with AT&T services, such as XM Radio Mobile, Push to Talk and MusicID."

"The demand for crossover devices is skyrocketing, and the Centro hits a sweet spot for many customers looking for a QWERTY device with a solid suite of messaging and multimedia features," said Michael Woodward, vice president, Business Mobility Products for AT&T's wireless unit. "At a great price that can be coupled with a variety of AT&T's messaging and data options, we are thrilled to offer Centro to our 70.1 million customers."

"Centro offers a simple way for customers to stay connected to the people who are important to them while better managing their increasingly hectic lifestyles, all at the price of a traditional mobile phone," said Brodie Keast, senior vice president of Marketing for Palm, Inc."

The AT&T Centro will sell for $99 with a new two-year service agreement. It is expected to sell for $399 without a service agreement. According to today's press release, there will be an obsidian black edition of the AT&T Centro which is expected to begin shipping in about four weeks. The glacial white Centro goes on sale today at AT&T retail outlets and online at www.att.com and the Palm online store. AT&T's unlimited data plan has been priced at $30 a month in addition to their standard voice and messaging plans.

Read the full Palm press release...

Update:

The Palm Centro website has been updated to include the AT&T Centro product specifications along side the Sprint Centro specifications.