O2 wins UK exclusive on Palm Pre, says report
Orange crushed again?
Word surfaced Wednesday that O2 has been tapped to be the exclusive carrier for the Palm Pre in the UK.
According to a report from The Guardian, Palm will announce the deal next week. If true, O2 - which already has an exclusive deal with Apple for UK distribution of the iPhone - will further lengthen its lead over Orange as Blighty's go-to provider of top-of-mind smartphones.
According to The Guardian, the competition between O2 and Orange was "fierce," but then so was the competition over the iPhone - and we all know who won that battle.
Launched on June 6th, the Pre has garnered its share of positive reviews, although The Reg's own assessment ranked its capabilities behind those of Apple's new iPhone 3GS, chiefly because of its problematic keyboard, challenging navigation, and understandable kinks in the 1.0 version of its operating system, webOS.
Apple recently announced that the iPhone 3GS sold over one million units in its first weekend of its availability, but the Pre isn't doing too shabbily. Estimates of its sales range between 150,000 and 300,000 units. ®
COMMENTS
iphone on t-mobile uk
heads up, heard it here first, i predict iphone on t-mobile uk from monday 13th july.
Well thats what they are saying in our call centre
Exclusivity scam!
I am absolutely fed up to the back teeth with "Exclusive" deals, and contract only schemes.
When I buy a car, regardless of brand, I am not tied to a single brand of petrol. My car is useless without petrol. When I buy a phone, I am tied to a network provider. In some cases, I'm even tied to the nature and duration of contract I sign.
Why can't I just buy a phone (any brand) and then be completely free to decide on my network provider, and the type of payment arrangement I have? Personally,I think the whole mobile phone market needs a shake-up, and I think subsidies and exclusivity deals should be abolished!
Paris, because she's not exclusive...
No2 O2
I was once with O2 and their customer service was shoddy beyond belief and their customer service was a joke.
Despite this I tried to get an iPhone but was denied by their fussy system because it objected to the letter "C" in my flat number.
It was amusing to see the Apple Store connecting to O2's web based platform via Internet Explorer on VMWare! Not that O2 systems could stay up for more than 5 minutes at a time when I was trying to purchase.
O2 may have the smartphones but they are not the smart choice.
Palm are shooting themselves in the foot here; there are a lot of us who won't touch O2 but if we would, we'd buy an iPhone. I would consider Pre if it were on Orange.
its a jobsie conspiracy he controls o2
and will cripple the pre
Mwaaahaaaahaaaa
@John H Woods
I also have an o2 dongle and it's a pile of turd. 3G coverage aside, the backend IP network is slow and badly interferes with crossing traffic.
