Palm, Vodafone launch slinky Treo 500v
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Full details Palm and Vodafone have just, as expected, announced the Treo 500v, a 3G smartphone aimed at the YouTube and MySpace generation and which sports Palm's curvy new handset design in iPod-like white and black versions.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Palm announced Wednesday that it would launch its Treo 680 handheld in China, and increase its presence in the Chinese market by opening a research and development (R&D) center there. The company said the smartphone will be sold in cooperation with CEC Telecom Science and Technology Co. , and distributed by Beijing Riverwill Communication Technology Co. The 680, designed to be a lower-cost alternative to other Treo models, runs the Palm operating system. It is a candybar-style quad-band GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phone that supports GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), which allow for mobile Internet access. PDAs have not yet made their mark in China, although they are growing in popularity, mostly thanks to aggressive pushes by manufacturers such as Lenovo Group, Dopod International, and Motorola, all of which have tailored their devices to the local market. One key design factor is recognition of handwritten Chinese characters. Palm said it is opening its first Asia R&D center in Shanghai for Asian language localization, to maintain better relations with its manufacturers in the region, and to accelerate time to market for its products in Asia. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Details of Palm's new smartphone are emerging ahead of the product's launch on Wednesday. According to details of a scanned advertisement from the Dutch subsidiary of The Phone Shop, which has appeared on numerous blogs, the product is called Palm Treo 500, itÂ uses a standard version of Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.0 operating system, runs on 3G (third-generation) mobile phone networks, and will be sold byÂ Vodafone Group. Vodafone had an exclusive agreement for theÂ Palm Treo 750v. A source familiar with the launch confirmed details in the ad, including the name of the product, OS, and Vodafone as a carrier partner, but declined to provide further details ahead of the launch. The Treo 500 appears to be targeted at the consumer market and is equipped with the Windows Mobile 6 Standard OS, which doesn't support touch-screen functionality. The lack of this feature and possibly some others could mean that the new smartphone will be priced lower than the Palm Treo 750v, which at â¬500 ($689) has been targeted at business users. In an interview on Monday, Jens Schulte-Bokum, head of the global terminal division at Vodafone, declined to comment on whether Vodafone planned to offer the new Palm smartphone in addition to the Palm Treo 750v, saying only that the operator is "still in discussions with Palm to refresh that lineup." Â
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First that team wins that thing, now thisâPalmOne (PalmSourceâs biggest customer and maker of the Treo 650) appears it really might be planning to use Microsoftâs WindowsMobile OS in its Treo line of SmartPhones.
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Facebook has officially launched its platform for cellular operators, and the U.K.'s Vodafone is the first to adopt it.
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Vodafone Group, the world&#39;s largest mobile phone operator, fired the first salvo in the pre-Christmas marketing war today when it announced the full launch of third-generation wireless services.
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Business & money: Europe's mobile operators vie for Christmas launch.
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Rumors of Treo&#39;s using a Microsoft operating system have been circulating for more than three years. Now an investment bank reports that PalmOne will use a
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone Group will introduce what could be its first mobile phone to carry its own brand exclusively, and not that of the phone manufacturer. A Vodafone spokesman confirmed that the phones will be introduced at an event in Hong Kong on Thursday, but would not provide additional details. The handsets will likely be made by China's Huawei Technologies Co., which said in February that it had signed an exclusive deal to provide Vodafone with its own brand of 3G phones. The phones would be sold in 21 countries, Huawei said, with the first handsets expected to hit the market in September. The deal with such a large operator marks a significant step for a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, which has been dominated by device makers from Europe, the U.S. and Korea. Vodafone already sells self-branded phones, but they also carry the name of the manufacturer. The handsets for its Simply offering, for example, feature the operator's logo prominently, but the name of the manufacturer, Sagem, is visible as well. Phones that carry an operator's brands exclusively are typically made by less well known phone makers. The operators often use them to improve their bargaining position with the top handset manufacturers, said Ben Wood, an analyst with Collins Consulting in the U.K. "A good [self-branded phone] strategy by network operators is a very effective stick to beat the major manufacturers with, to make sure they hit pricing in particular, but also the technology and functionality curves that the network operators want," he said. The self-branded devices are unlikely to steal much market share from the big handset makers, however. "It keeps them on their toes but I don't see it as a big threat," Wood said. "It's highly unlikely that the network operators can ever get the brand resonance on an own-branded device that manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung get." That's partly because phone makers often spend several million dollars marketing a new phone in a single market, and operators are unlikely to match that, Wood said. In addition, end users aren't always happy with the service they get from their operator, so the self-branding may not instill loyalty. Operators typically offer self-branded phones tactically, to target a specific segment. For example, Orange sells a self-branded line of high-end phones targeted at business professionals. O2Â offers a self-branded phone for the low end of the 3G market. The new Vodafone phones may also target low-end 3G users.
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Debuts at under Â£300, just Palm has formally announced the availability of the Palm OS-based Treo 680 smart phone in the UK. The handset will go on sale today for around Â£299 - Â£30 less than the company recently began taking pre-orders for.â¦
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Sprint Corp. announced it will be the first carrier to offer palmOne Inc.&#39;s new Treo 650 smart phone. The device, which will retail for $600, includes phone, e-mail, Web, organizer, MP3 player, digital camera and camcorder capabilities.
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InfoWorld - As part of a strategy to generate greater revenue from mobile data services, Vodafone Group has collaborated with Palm to launch a smartphone modeled after the&#160;Treo 750v&#160;but at a fraction of the price and with a newly designed user interface.
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(InfoWorld) - As part of a strategy to generate greater revenue from mobile data services, Vodafone Group has collaborated with Palm to launch a smartphone modeled after theÂ Treo 750vÂ but at a fraction of the price and with a newly designed user interface. Vodafone will exclusively sell theÂ Palm Treo 500v, which debuts in Europe in October, for three months, after which the handset will be available to other operators and retail outlets, in Europe and Asia, Roy Bedlow, vice president and general manager of Palm Europe, said Wednesday. Vodafone had a similar agreement with Palm when the operator launched the Treo 750v last year. Pricing of the 500v will vary according to market. The handset will be available free or for a small fee together with a 12- to 18-month contract in the U.K., according to Vodafone spokeswoman Helen Brockett. In Germany, pricing for the handset will begin at â¬30 ($41) and increase slightly according to the conditions of the operator's two-year contracts. By comparison, the Treo 750v sold for more than â¬500 with a two-year contract in Germany when it was launched. However, unlike the Treo 750v, which is targeted primarily at business users, the 500v lacks touchscreen capabilities, largely to lower the handset's cost, Bedlow said. The phone runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Standard operating system, which doesn't support touchscreen capability, unlike the Professional version used in the 750v model. Although the Treo 500v runs on 3G (third-generation) networks, it doesn't support the more recent version HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) protocol, again mostly for cost reasons, according to Bedlow. But the new smartphone is packed with a few features missing in the 750v, including a new interface designed to give users faster and easier access to Vodafone Live mobile Internet applications. The applications are shown in a carousel that users can manipulate for easy navigation, according to Bedlow. In addition to Live, the carousel includes a number of applications such as Google Maps, YouTube and eBay. The Treo 500v is designed for one-hand use, according to Bedlow. Like the Treo 750v, the 500v supports Microsoft Direct Push technology to deliver Outlook mail, as well as Vodafone's own push e-mail service. Users can also configure the handset to send and receive e-mail from the Vodafone account or from other e-mail accounts. "With the Treo 500v, Vodafone wants to broaden its user base for mobile data services such as the Internet and e-mail," Bedlow said. "The handset makes more features of high-end mobile phones available to more users." The new smartphone has 150MB of internal memory and a slot for a microSD expansion card. It is also equipped with Bluetooth wireless technology. As part of the European rollout, Vodafone will offer the Treo 500v next month in Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and the U.K., with other European countries as well as the Asia-Pacific region to follow, according to Bedlow. The Treo 500v will not be available in the U.S., although Palm is planning new devices later this year for North American market, according to a company spokesman. Â
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Palm joined Verizon Wireless in announcing on Monday the availability of the Treo 755p smartphone through that carrier. While not the breakthrough product that some had been hoping for, the 755p refreshes the Treo line for Verizon.
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PalmOne is introducing the much anticipated PalmOne Treo 650, an updated version of its success smartphone device, the Treo 600. The company is keeping it small (11.
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The PalmOne Treo 650 Smartphone with high-resolution screen, Bluetooth, swappable battery and extended multimedia capabilities was officially announced today.
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While the Treo 700 has yet to surface in the United States for GSM networks, European customers of Vodafone are getting first access to the Treo 750, a slightly sleeker smartphone running Windows Mobile 5.0 that has no outside antenna.