14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless seems set to deliver webOS handsets to its users as soon as January 2010, the latest reports around the Internet suggest. The company has bee long rumored to be on its way to release Palm's Pre and Pixi phones on its airwaves, and it seems that things are set to become official in no time. And by that we meant at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, where the wireless operator is expected to announce everything officially.
The two webOS handsets, which are currently available in the United States via Sprint, are also said to come around with a series of enhancements over the existing models. The improvements include additional memory added into the equation, at least this is what Business Week reports. Moreover, the news site suggests as well that US customers might have the opportunity to enjoy the Palm Pre and Pixi via AT&T too in the first half of the ongoing year.
Palm has announced the first webOS phone, the Pre, one year ago during CES 2009, and brought it to the shelves in June last year. The Pixi has been launched during autumn via Sprint, and it seems that the Sunnyvale-based handset vendor is aiming at widening the availability of its phones to gain more market share. The Pre was expected to turn into a market leading device, yet its performance was relatively poor, at least in the US market.
However, the availability of Pre and Pixi on Big Red's network might offer Palm a new chance to prove that its new webOS platform and the handsets running under it can become successful. There are a wide range of other phones the two devices will have to compete against (including the Motorola DROID and the BlackBerry Storm2), yet Verizon, which should unveil their pricing during this week, might put in place appealing offers with them.
In related news, we learn that Verizon might have already ordered 400,000 Palm devices to have them available at launch (200,000 units for Pre and the same for Pixi). The number seems to be conservative enough to show that the carrier wants to make sure that there is demand before ordering more units. However, we should also mention that previous reports suggested Big Red ordered 600,000 units in total, lowering the amount from the original 800,000 order.