What was I thinking before? Of course Verizon still loves Pre! Based on the past and current partnership Palm has with carriers, T-Mobile is the only one that doesn’t carry any Treo an Centro smart phones. That wasn’t a big deal at all since Tmobile has much smaller subscription base than other big carriers. And since Verizon doesn’t have any iPhone like device in the near future (at least until AT&T ends the exclusive deal with Apple), the Pre can really take advantage and market to the iphoneless Verizon customers. Many of my friends who were anxiously looking for a touch screen phone already upgraded to the BB Storm last year. And they will have choices early next year thanks to the Pre

I am hoping Scott Moritz is wrong on this one. Otherwise, the iPhoneless Verizon is making a big mistake. Sure they can try to sell more Blackberry Storm. But there are just not enough Blackberry fans out there to support the growth of Blackberry. In other words, they need some cool devices that prevent people switching to AT&T for the iPhone. Seriously, the only reason that I am not with Verizon yet is because they don’t have anything close the iPhone. Once again I am disappointed and have to stay away from Verizon longer until they have something like the Pre to offer. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

That program will kick off midway through the month, and the selected titles – which will include both free and paid apps – will be among the next wave of software released into the Catalog.  Revenues will be split 70/30 (developer/Palm) after relevant sales taxes, with only one-time charges allowed, while customers will be able to use Visa and MasterCard credit cards to pay for their apps.  Conspicuous by its absence is any sort of cut for the carriers.

The full developer program is expected to launch in the US this fall.  More details regarding paid-apps policies at http://pdnblog.palm.com/

Press Release:

Palm to Open E-commerce Beta Program for Palm App Catalog

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 18, 2009 — Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) announced that starting today developers who wish to charge for their Palm webOS™ applications can begin submitting them for consideration in the Palm® App Catalog e-commerce beta program, which will begin in mid-September. Developers selected to participate in the beta program will have the opportunity to have their applications, both free and paid, featured in the Palm App Catalog ahead of the next wave, and to be among the first to be paid for purchases of their Palm webOS applications.

As part of the App Catalog e-commerce beta program for the Palm Pre™ phone and future Palm webOS devices, developers will receive a 70/30 split (developer/Palm) of gross revenues generated through application sales (less applicable sales taxes). Customers will be able to easily purchase applications using Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Further details about the program and distribution model will be provided in the coming weeks. Palm expects to launch the full developer program in the United States this fall.

“We’re rolling out the submission process and e-commerce capabilities of the Palm App Catalog with careful consideration for both the developer and customer,” said Katie Mitic, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Palm, Inc. “We want every part of the Palm webOS experience to be the best, and a strong e-commerce model is key to a thriving developer community, great apps and an excellent customer experience.”

More information about how developers can submit an application for the beta
e-commerce program, as well as criteria for application acceptance, is available on the Palm Developer Network blog at http://pdnblog.palm.com/.

About Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc. is a leading mobile products company, creating instinctive yet powerful mobile products that enable people to better manage their lives on the go. The company’s products for consumers, mobile professionals and businesses include Palm Pre™, Palm® Treo™ and Palm Centro™ phones, as well as software, services and accessories.

Palm products are sold through select Internet, retail, reseller and wireless operator channels throughout the world, and at Palm online stores (http://www.palm.com/store).

More information about Palm, Inc. is available at http://www.palm.com.

That’s significantly lower than the early estimates, and reassuring news for Palm shareholders.  Abramsky and his team monitored around 24 Sprint stores to gather their data, concluding in a report this week that Palm Pre sales have “sustained momentum”.

They also suggest that Sprint has sold around 350,000 Pre devices in the seven weeks since it launched.  All well and good, until you remember that back on June 30th Equity Research analyst Edward Snyder tipped Pre sales figures to that point at 300,000.  Either Sprint has only sold 50,000 Pre smartphones in July, or someone’s guesses were way off base.  Palm’s stock value had risen 400-percent for the year by the end of June, but dipped 15-percent this month on the basis of the poor returns rate estimates.

That issue, of course, was that Apple purposefully blocked the Pre in their most recent iTunes update, repeating their earlier warning that “in future” some devices not officially supported by themselves may not work with the software.  Palm obviously took that as an invitation to tweak their smartphone to restore compatibility.

Elsewhere in webOS 1.1.0 there’s faster performance overall, a switch to Wikipedia mobile versus the full site when searching in Card view or from the Launcher, a new gesture to move forward through webpages (”make a short swipe left to right in the gesture area”) and emoticons are properly displayed.  There’s also better management over unread email counts for push-email.  Palm have the full list of changes here.

Palm have also confirmed that they have an unknown number of new applications in the pipeline for release into the App Catalog, presumably from the closed “early access program” that has been running from early April.  It’s unclear when these will actually be released for Pre owners to download, but given Apple have just announced that they have passed the 1.5bn app downloads mark, it makes sense that Palm will try to get more content out as soon as they can.

As well as the Mojo SDK itself, Palm have also made available all of the developers guide and documentation, plus their UI guidelines and a “hello world” sample app.  More information at their new developers’ portal.

This new commercial takes on a more calm and serene approach, almost boring for some people, others may say it makes them sleepy. A lot has to do with the background music and the way Tamara Hope talks about the Pre. The first Flow was definitely more “flashy”.

Unfortunately, this new ad doesn’t show much of the revolutionary WebOS, I mean, come on Palm! When I hear about the Pre, the first thing I do is think of Multitask, Synergy and Intuitive Notifications. But, what it does instead, is promote Microsoft’s new search engine. Okay, it was probably unintentional, watch the video for yourself and let us know what you think about it in the forum.

[Via Gadgetsonthego]

Personally, I don’t know why would someone pay extra money to have less features on the Pre in Verizon’s Network, but hey, that’s just me.
Cleanser posted that voice and text are working, but data isn’t: “Only problem is that I can’t get data to work. Apparently WebOS is checking to see if the device is provisioned or not before allowing a data session to take place. So my next step would be to somehow bypass this provisioning check.”

The hard part (apparently) is getting Verizon to take the MEID (Mobile Equipment Identifier), despite Verizon’s claim of being an Open Network.
The Mojo SDK is not out for the public just yet, so this is an early attempt that I would not recommend to everyone. For now, just keep your eyes open for further updates, and don’t try this hack if you are not familiar with rooting your Pre.

[via SlashGear]