We’re pumped to see the Palm Pre 2 made available in the United Kingdom in a delicious unlocked flavor, but that’s only from Palm. Even in GSM-friendly unlocked-happy Europe, most customers still get their phones direct from the carrier, complete with hefty subsidizations. The carrier is where you won’t be able to get the Palm Pre 2 in England, Scotland, Wales, or anywhere else in the British Isles. Pocket-lint has confirmed with UK cellular carriers Orange, Three, Vodafone, and O2 that none of them have plans to carry the Palm Pre 2. We can’t say we’re stunned - support for the phone from carriers has been weak at best. In fact, the only announced carriers are Verizon and SFR, and they were known at launch. Here’s hoping their all holding out for something new, maybe in January...

Source: Pocket-lint; Thanks to Ben for the tip!

So there’s plenty of uproar in the United States about the Pre 2 not looking like a possibility for Sprint, but what of the rest of the world? It’s not looking exceedingly good there either.

Both Vodafone Germany and O2 Germany have come out to say that they have no plans to offer the Pre 2 to their customers. The German carriers are uncharacteristically communicative with customers over Twitter, at least in comparison to their international brethren.

Most other carriers have maintained a stony wall of silence, or in the case of Sprint responded with a company line email to all inquiries noting that they don’t have plans to offer the Pre 2 to customers, who could just buy an original and aging Pre if they wanted one. Problem is, we’re fairly certain that 99% of those barraging Sprint on Facebook and via email (you can stop forwarding us their company line replies) already have a Pre and were miffed when they couldn’t get the Pre Plus, let alone the markedly better Pre 2.

There is at least one bright spot in this strange Pre 2 launch mess: webOS 2.0 will get to everybody, at some point in, you guessed it, the “coming months.” If "coming months" ends up being as short as we hope, then it might not be so long of a wait.

Of course, the question we’re all trying to answer is “why don’t any carriers want to sell me a Pre 2?” There are a couple of possible answers, and they’re wrapped up in the mystery of carrier-manufacturer contracts. It’s possible no carriers want to invest in training and advertising to sell the Pre 2 because of their lackluster experience selling the phones’ predecessors, or maybe they’re holding off for something more impressive, maybe something we’ll get to see at CES this year. Or maybe nobody told them.

Source: Palm UK (Facebook), Palm France (Facebook), O2 Germany (Twitter), Vodafone Germany (Facebook); via: Golem.de, webOSroundup, webOS Blog.de; Thanks to everybody that sent all of this in!

Palm has announced that the Pixi Plus will land in Spain on May 10th for the Vodafone network. Pricing was not announced, nor was the Palm Pre Plus - which we have to say strikes us a mighty odd.

Any Spaniards looking to make the jump to this little wonder, or will you be holding out for some Palm Pre Plus action?

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

German blog webOS-Blog (Google translate link for those of you who don't read German) has it on good word from Vodafone employees that the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will be priced at € 579.90 and € 399.90 respectively without contract and for as little as € 149.90 and € 49.90 respectively when purchased on contract .  There's still no official word from either Palm or Vodafone on pricing or release dates, but based what the non-plussed devices are selling for on other networks, those numbers make sense to us.

Thanks to Julian for the tip!

Billboards are one thing,  but when palm.com/de tells you that the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are coming to Germany on April 28th, it's probably save to stop calling fake and start wondering when other GSM carriers in other countries can get in on the plus action. We're actually starting to wonder if there's something fundamentally Teutonic about webOS that can explain the love affair between Palm and the German people.

Actually, the bigger news is that O2 Germany will no longer have an exclusive on the device despite the fact that they've arguably tried harder than any other carrier on the planet to make the device a success - with great results. Anyhow, confirming rumors earlier this month, the Pre Plus is coming to Vodafone - in Germany anyway. Don't count out O2, however, as we hear that they intend on ensuring Telmap navigator will soon be available for webOS. 

Again, it all goes down April 28th, which incidentally is the direction our morale is going as we wait for an actual, firm release date of the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus on AT&T.

Update: if you love press releases, Palm has one for you.

Update 2: Title fixed (and yes, we're tired of this alliteration). Good news for UK webOS lovers: Electric Pig reports that O2 UK says it's coming.

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

Ah, inventory systems, they’re so bad at keeping secrets. We’ve known for a while now that the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were certified for sale in Europe, but the question was always “which carrier?” Rumors have pointed towards current Palm Pre seller O2 picking up the Plus variants, but we were never too sure about that - we've yet to see a "Plus" launch on the same network as an original.

As it would turn out, it looks more like competitor Vodafone will be picking up the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Inventory screens posted on Pre Ticker show the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus (along with replacement/exchange devices) listed in what is purported to be a Vodafone inventory screen (at the very least, it is German).

Is it possible that Vodafone could be picking up the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus? Absolutely, and it could stand to be a good thing for Palm. Vodafone has a larger footprint than O2, and behind China Mobile is the world’s no. 2 network in subscriber count. The question of “when” and “how much” is still up in the air, but given Palm’s dire predictions for the current quarter, we wouldn’t count on it being any time soon.

[via: webOS Blog.de]

Verizon, Rubinstein says, have agreed that “their execution of [Palm's] launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales.”  This will involve greater advertising and more Palm “experts” attempting to teach would-be buyers why webOS should feature in their future.  Full email is below:

Team,

This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being. On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March.

I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March. In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales.

Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales. To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.

All of these efforts are examples of how we are working to accelerate adoption and grow distribution of webOS. In the next few weeks, your management will work with you to make sure your priorities are laser-focused, primarily on helping to increase sales, improve product quality and differentiate the Palm product experience.

Our goals are taking longer than expected to achieve, but I am still confident that our talented team has what it takes to get the job done.

We’ll schedule an all-hands meeting after our earnings announcement in March, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Go team!!!

jon

webOS 1.4 is expected to bring with it the ability to record video using the smartphone’s previously still-only camera, together with paving the way for Flash 10.1 support.  However Flash 10.1 won’t actually be part of the update itself.  According to PreCentral’s sources, the update will begin distributing to users in 100,000 blocks, but can also be manually triggered.

This is all rumor right now, however, so we’ll have to wait until February 25th to see if it pans out.

Yesterday was no different. During a conference call with analysts and investors discussing the company’s second-quarter earnings, which are down a bit by the way, the company’s chief operating officer, Denny Strigl, insisted the Palm Pre would land on their network early next year.

We’ve heard this before and frankly, the shtick is getting old. Given that Verizon and Sprint use the same CDMA and EVDO technology in their networks, it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that the Pre could eventually land in Verizon’s suffocating hands but Verizon has repeatedly stated this and provided no proof to back it up, prompting Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse to state during an interview at a Palm Pre launch event, “They need to check their facts. Both Palm and Sprint have agreed not to discuss the length of the exclusivity deal. But I can tell you it’s not six months.”

We understand Verizon is more than a little anxious for a great phone. They have a very solid network and the most subscribers of any American wireless service provider but when it comes to phones, in comparison to their network rivals, they are lagging. T-Mobile USA still exclusively holds the only two Android phones available in the American market. AT&T has some time left with Apple on their iPhone exclusivity deal, and Sprint was the first network with a webOS device with their exclusive, the Palm Pre. Sure, Verizon has a deal inked with Blackberry makers, Research in Motion, for the Blackberry Storm but to call that phone “troublesome” would be an understatement.

Okay, we get it. You want the phone and you need the phone but do we really need to keep hearing about this back and forth with no proof? Enough.

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3. About “Unlocking” Your Palm Pre…