The hot new Palm Pre which is very similar to the new iPhone will go on sale in Australia in August with Telstra snaring an exclusive three month contract say Telstra insiders.
Confirming the release of the new Palm Pre in Australia Palm Country Manager Brett Murray said that their new phone will be released in the second half of 2009 however he would not confirm an exclusive deal with Telstra who are also tipped to have cut an exclusive deal to get the new HTC Google G2 Android phone.
Murray also said that he did not anticipate any patent problems with Apple over the design of the new Pre which has an operating system very similar to the Apple 3G iPhone.
In Australia the Palm Pre is set to go head to head with Smartphone offerings from HTC, Blackberry and Apple. It is also anticipated that Telstra’s marketing machine who are set to be responsible for all Palm marketing is set to limit supply initally.
In the USA the phone is tipped to go on sale on June 7th with Best Buy stores only getting one phone per store.
According to research group iSuppli the new phone costs around $US170 to make. ISuppli expects Palm will try to sell the Pre to Telstra for about $400 who will then add their margin with the product then being sold on a plan for around $299 or Outright for $899.
The iSuppli analysis of $US170 build cost does not include shipping, logistics, marketing and other channel costs, the group said.
“The similarity in features between the Pre and the iPhone clearly reveals the mark Palm is trying to hit,” iSuppli analyst Tina Teng of iSuppli said.
“The use of a multi-touch screen — a key allure of the iPhone — and Palm’s innovative WebOS operating system, are likely to allow the Pre to appeal to a broad range of consumers.”
The Pre is seen as Palm’s best hope to fight rivals such as the iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, which have hurt Palm’s Smartphone sales in recent years.
