The UK Guardian newspaper’s website reports that the Palm Pre, recently launched in the US in early June, is headed exclusively to the O2 network in the UK. O2 is owned by Spain’s Telefonica group, which reportedly secured the worldwide rights to the Pre as reported back in March of this year, but which is still unconfirmed by either Palm or Telefonica. What this means for Malaysia is that the Pre would probably not launch on Celcom in an exclusive or semi-exclusive deal. This is because O2 beat out Vodafone in the UK for the Pre exclusivity, and as I’ve mentioned many times before, both Vodafone and Celcom have a close working relationship worldwide, where handsets exclusively available on the Vodafone network will invariably find their way on to Celcom in Malaysia – with the HTC Magic being the most recent example.
An announcement is expected sometime early next week from Palm regarding this matter, so we will know for sure that it is indeed O2 that will be carrying the Pre exclusively in the UK.
Source. Via engadget.
