Treo 650 to ship in Europe in 2nd quarter
by Volker Weber
The Register reports:
The European release of PalmOne's Treo 650 smart phone has been delayed, the company admitted this week. Launched in the US in October 2004, the 650's European debut was initially pegged for February 2005, according to comments made at the time by Ed Colligan, the company's president and soon-to-be interim CEO. However, PalmOne said yesterday that the handset will now not ship here until Q2 - at least five months after the 650 shipped in the US. At least PalmOne has the backing of the Orange network, which will offer the smart phone to its UK, French and Swiss customers, PalmOne said.
I was confused at first, when palmOne made the initial Treo 650 announcement. What was being announced was only the CDMA version of this smartphone. The GSM version was still months out. We have seen the same delays from Nokia the other way around. Months after shipping GSM versions they finally came out with CDMA phones. It was poor communications by palmOne that caused this confusion and this has probably all but stalled the market for the Treo 600 GSM phone when people started holding off their purchase since the 650 already "came out".
The Treo 650 GSM only become available 10 days ago in the US. By availability I mean that palmOne started taking orders. Not sure whether they already started shipping those orders. I have no idea what the original plan for shipping the GSM version was, but February sounds about right. Since it is already available in the US, it looks like palmOne almost made it. Now they need to get those containers from Asia to Europe and start selling them here as well. I am still voting for CeBIT.
The other interesting tidbit is that Orange will be shipping the Treo 650. They also had the 600. I still have no information on any German provider to support the device.
