14 DAY TRIAL // Palm, the veteran smartphone and PDA manufacturer, has proudly announced today that its Palm Centro has reached the 2 millionth unit sold. This comes four months after the Sunnyvale company announced the 1 millionth Centro sold, and 9 months after the smartphone first became available.
Although it was initially released only in the US and only via Sprint, Palm Centro can now be acquired from almost 20 carriers, in more than 25 countries around the globe, including Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Australia, UK, Romania and several countries from Asia Pacific.
Touted as Palm's lightest and smallest smartphone, the Centro is also the most affordable one. In the US, for example, with a contract agreement for two years, the device can be purchased for as little as $69 (via AT&T) or $99 (from Sprint or Verizon).
The success of the Centro is also illustrated by the fact that, according to AdMob's Mobile Metrics report, the smartphone was (in May) the eighth most used mobile device for browsing the Web - ahead of other popular handsets like Nokia N95, Nokia N73, Sony Ericsson K800 and Apple's iPhone.
"Consumers are ready to do more on their mobile phone, and Centro has struck a chord around the world. Centro has everything a person needs to stay connected with everyone who is important to them - and at a price point and size that make smartphones more attractive to a much wider audience," says Brodie Keast, Palm's senior vice president of marketing.
Because of its set of features and reasonable price, the Centro is Palm's first smartphone to be widely embraced by young users and women. The handset combines a full QWERTY keyboard, a 320 x 320 pixels touchscreen display, e-mail, organizer, Web and multimedia capabilities into one compact and elegant case.
In conclusion, it seems that Palm is doing quite well lately. Moreover, with the release of the new Treo 800w flagship smartphone, and the upcoming availability of Treo 850 (another high-end device), Palm could actually get back some of its pre-iPhone glory.