O2 wins UK Palm Pré exclusive?
Market sources claim carrier will offer iPhone, iPhone clone
Not content with snapping up the iPhone, O2 may have also secured exclusive rights to sell Palm’s upcoming Pré smartphone in the UK.
Palm's Pré: could arrive on O2 in the UK
Quoting sources familiar with distribution contracts between Telefónica – O2’s parent company – and Palm, Spanish website Expansión has reported that O2 will market the much-hyped handset exclusively in the UK.
Although a Pré launch date wasn’t mentioned, the report added that Telefónica will also launch the phone in Spain before the summer through local operator Movistar. So it’s possible that the Pré could become available in the UK around the same time.
If Expansión’s moles are correct, then the news could put an end to rumours that Vodafone’s in the running to sell the Pré exclusively in the UK. Speculation emerged after a Pré handset fitted with on one of the operator’s SIM cards was seen at Mobile World Congress in Spain last month. ®
COMMENTS
@By Dale Le Page
Network tied handsets do just that - they tie you to a network.
I have a perfectly good virgin PAYG sim, and put it in my sim-free phone. When I go to Germany I take it out and put a German Selphy sim in. In Korea it gets my KPN sim stuffed up it. In Bueonos Aries I stick in a t-mobile sim.
Where I live Orange has the best coverage. Where my sister lives it is T-mobile. Both of us have sent back O2 phones because they are a brick 90% of the time.
Why should we be blackmailed into using an inferior network just to get a decent phone? It is a very stupid decision by Palm, in my opinion.
Eh?
Seriously guys, why are you all so against network tied handsets? I can understand not being enthused, but seriously angry? Chill guys!!
Me too !
There I was thinking "Hmm, looks nice" - then I find it's likely to be on a network I dumped for their crap coverage (notably no usable signal at home).
I might have considered a sim-free one, a tied one, not *****y likely !
If they make it an exclusive deal
then Palm can go fuck themselves. I do not buy locked phones.
Drivel
FFS, all locking this rather lovely looking new phone will do is force customers elsewhere. I would love to own a Pre and would like to have a legitimate one rather than a dodgy cracked overseas job, but I refuse to give in to carrier blackmail on the issue.
Just when Palm looked like they were digging themselves out of their hole, they do this. Rubbish.
