Palm's Centro Tells Foes: 'Talk to the Hand'

It's no wonder that the Centro has been hugely successful for Palm. How successful, you ask?

According to a recent Bloomberg dispatch, Palm Centro sales are through the roof. At the same time, a much better known smartphone's sales has suffered in comparison.

Palm had 13.4% of the market for advanced phones in the first quarter, up from 7.9% in the previous period. That's according to research firm IDC.

At the same time, iPhone's(AAPL) share of sales fell to 19.2%, down from 26.7%. But RIM's BlackBerry continued to dominate the market with 44.5%, up from 35.1%.

Some of the iPhone softness could be a direct result of not always being able to find one to buy. In the past few weeks, iPhone stocks have disappeared from Apple stores possibly/probably in anticipation of the new iPhone2 model, which could be announced as early as next Monday.

Apple, which made a bold sales prediction for this year of over 10 million units worldwide, has also been busy signing up foreign cellular companies to sell their phones everywhere on the planet. So while sales might be down for now -- expect things to start jumping when iPhone2 actually goes on sale.

There are also rumors that Apple may be planning a limited-feature $200 iPhone model. $100 would be better.

And there's upcoming competition coming from phones that run on Google's(GOOG) Android OS, two new BlackBerrys (Bold and Thunder), the Garmin(GRMN) nuviphone, Sprint/Samsung's Instinct, SonyEricsson's(SNE) Xperia and others.

But all of this takes nothing away from the Palm Centro who figured out how to make a smartphone "for the people." They are the majority of cell-phone buyers on the planet and spend, on average, $100 or less on a new handset. Palm was able to parlay its high-tech phone technologies with low-tech prices -- and it is now reaping the rewards.

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