Palm Pre Goes to Telefonica, Not Vodafone

According to the latest news on the Web, the highly expected Palm Pre mobile phone will not be distributed in UK by Vodafone; instead it will be added to Telefónica's offering. It seems that the company, along with its subsidiaries, Movistar and O2, will be the ones to have Pre launched in Spain, UK and Latin America.

According to the news, the Palm Pre handset should be launched by Movistar in Spain and in some Latin American countries in which the carrier operates before the summer is here. Yet, for the time being, the company hasn't confirmed that it will make the move, so it only remains a rumor until official word surfaces.

For now it is still uncertain at what price the Palm Pre will come to the carrier's offering, yet it is expected to be available with a series of data plans. This would also suggest that there will be a range of price tags at which the device will become available for purchase, and it will also depend on the country one will purchase the device in.

At the same time, we should also note the fact that Telefónica is mainly a GSM/HSDPA cell phone operator, which means that it should sell the GSM version of Palm Pre, namely the one that surfaced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.

The CDMA variant of Pre is expected to come to the US market on the mobile phone carrier Sprint, though the exact launch date hasn't yet been confirmed. At the same time, the handset should also go to Canada either on Bell or Telus. For the time being, the fact that Telefónica managed to close the deal for the release of Pre should mean a lot for the company, as it is currently placed third in the world and it is competing against Vodafone, which comes in second.