There's no doubt that WebOS is an interesting smartphone OS, but the Palm Pre has yet to become a widely popular smartphone in a rough market. According to Palm's CEO, Jon Rubinstein, the company's inner circle didn't expect it to be either, and sees 2010 market as the real test for WebOS (just like HTC sees the 2010 market as the real test for Android).
According to NYT, Palm estimates they'll be able to sell 10 million WebOS smartphones next year, about 5 percent of the smartphone market. That assumes the company can get more carriers in the U.S. and Europe to sell Palm phones.
Verizon Wireless has already said it'll start offering the Palm Pre early next year. O2 Telefonica is spreading the Palm Pre throughout Europe now, under an exclusive agreement like Sprint has in the U.S. now.
Additionally, Palm hopes that the Palm Pixi will become a success like the Palm Centro, possibly hoping that the approximately three million Centro owners will replace their current phones with the new Pixi. If Palm adds AT&T to its carrier mix again as well, there's no doubt that Palm could get a nice boost in 2010, relatively speaking.
But right now, Sprint is the only U.S. carrier that sells Palm's smartphones, whether it being WebOS or Palm OS smartphones. We find it very strange that Palm didn't team up with either AT&T or Verizon for the Palm Pixi first. It could possibly have made Palm's 2009 holiday season a blast, and prepared the ground for bigger WebOS smartphones to (hopefully) come. Palm can't live on the Palm Pre for several years - even Apple takes the time to ship a new iPhone annually, subsequently regaining lost buzz.
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