Palm Sells 1.0 Million Centro Smartphones!

Following the news two weeks ago that the Centro is the fastest selling Palm smartphone ever, the company yesterday announced that it has sold its one-millionth Palm Centro smartphone – a clear demonstration that the device’s $99 price point, design and functionatily has won it mass appeal. 

The fact that people across 10 countries worldwide can now benefit from the full power of a smartphone – QWERTY keyboard, color touchscreen, browse the web, quickly type messages, integrated contacts list and more –  all at the price and overall form factor of a traditional mobile phone has evidently helped to make the Palm Centro a winner (I use it daily now as my primary device).

"The Palm Centro is flying off the shelves because users who want to step up to a smartphone see it as the perfect first choice,” said Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing for Palm, Inc. "It has everything a person needs to stay organized and connected with everyone who is important to them.  We're very excited about the Centro's near-instant popularity in the U.S. and think it's going to be a huge hit as it continues to make its way across the globe.”

First introduced in the United States last September exclusively with Sprint, and more recently introduced on AT&T in February, the fully featured Centro smartphone is available from both carriers for $99.99 or even for FREE.  Compared with other Palm smartphones, Centro is reaching almost double the number of women, more than double the number of customers under age 35, and nearly three times as many customers with a household income of less than $75,000.  Centro offers customers an affordable, simple and fun option for staying connected and doing more with their mobile phones.

"Smartphones are certainly not new to business professionals; however, now more than ever we are seeing consumers migrate toward these types of devices as form factors have become more appealing and price points are now competing with traditional mobile phones,” said Ryan Reith, senior research analyst with IDC. "Palm's Centro plays right into the hands of the consumer looking for a more robust experience on their mobile phone. We definitely expect to see this trend continue worldwide.”

Increasingly, consumers are making the shift from traditional mobile phones to smartphones, motivated by the desire to do more with their phones and the arrival of lower-cost devices.  Smartphones accounted for 11 percent of all mobile phone sales in 2007 in the United States and this is expected to increase to 35 percent by 2011.  A recent Palm survey of Centro customers highlighted this trend, indicating that 70 percent are first-time smartphone users.

The continued and growing Centro sales combined with the forthcoming release of the new enterprise-class Windows Mobile Treo 800w by the end of the summer, the unveiling of the next generation Nova operating system by the end of this year and a range of completely revamped business and consumer smartphone designs for 2009 certainly help point to a Palm revival in the very near future... 

Treonauts are always one in a million…