Palm's Pre Is Coming to Europe, Says CEO

The new Palm Pre will go on sale in European countries during the first half of this year, the same time frame as for the U.S., Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a brief interview.

The Palm Pre version announced at CES on Thursday, which Sprint will get exclusive access to in the U.S., supports EV-DO Rev A for mobile broadband access, but Palm is also working on a more Euro-friendly 3G version of the handset. Colligan didn't elaborate on any of the technical details.

But if the Pre follows in the footsteps of other recently announced smart phones, it will likely support for HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) at 7.2Mbps (megabits per second), as well as HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) at 2Mbps.

The Pre comes equipped with Palm's new operating system, WebOS, and combines a touch interface with a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom of the phone.

No pricing has been announced so far.

About 780,000 PalmOS based smart phones were sold to consumers during the third quarter last year, which was more than twice as many as in the same period a year earlier.

But at the same time, competitors Research In Motion (RIM) sold 5.8 million units and Apple sold 4.72 million iPhones, according to Gartner.