Palm Pre Coming To O2 UK : Too Little, Too Late?

The announcement by O2 that Palm Pre is coming to the UK was supposed to be met with bewildering celebration accompanied by much enthusiasm on both side of the English Channel - or La Manche for the French.

Instead, the day was miserable in London and there were already some very dark clouds threatening to make the Pre not only Palm's best smartphone ever but also its worst nightmare.

A quick look at today's fluctuations of the share price of Palm tells the whole story. As soon as the news of Pre being officially launched on O2 broke, the company's share price dropped like a stone and finished the day down 2.67 percent. It is still dropping slightly in after hours transactions.

So what's next? Well, the Pre has been around since January and started to sell in June in the US and will be on sale, hopefully before Christmas (let's stick to November) in Europe and England. So there might be up to 10 months lag between the announcement at CES 2009 and the launch by O2 UK.

(Why not read out related article 5 Reasons Why Pre Won't Replace The iPhone For O2 for further insight?)

Compare that with Apple's iPhone 3GS. The device was announced on the 8th of June and released on the 19th of the same month. If Apple can do it, why can't the Pre? Why wait for so long before releasing the smartphone?