China Telecom CEO: Pre coming to China in July 28
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 3:26 pm EDT 
It’s been rumored and rumbled for some time now, but we finally have official word from on high. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, in the news conference following their mostly positive quarterly and fiscal year report, China Telecom Chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu announced that his network will be picking up BlackBerry devices in May and the Palm Pre in July.
Presumably at this point they will be Pre Plus phones (no word on the Pixi headed to China), but what restrictions China’s government will place on the phones remains to be seen. China Telecom is the country’s third largest provider, and the largest CDMA in China. Looking back at the iPhone launch, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Wi-Fi disabled on or missing from the Pre when it reaches China’s shores. Adding devices from Palm and Research in Motion is part of China Telecom’s strategy to compete with China Unicom, which recently launched the iPhone in China. The smartphone launches are also behind a drive to make China Unicom’s mobile division profitable, currently the business is sustained by landline phone and broadband communications.
China Telecom has been reported to be in talks with Palm since August of 2009, so it’s nice to finally get some official word on the Chinese launch of webOS.
Thanks to mikeh20 for the tip!
28 Comments
O great here comes the knock off pres...
But again good chance that plam will sell a lot of pres and pixi's over there even of less then .5% buy one its going to be a lot
and that would be good for palm if the start moving a lot of units. I do not want to see palm fail they are a great company have made some mistakes in the past but with this new platform they have a good fighting chance to pull through
Palm is now a subsidiary of HP. It has already made all of its mistakes. And it is now part of a much larger company that will reap any benefits of any Chinese sales.
can palm just send it's extra lot of non-plus pre's to china?
Actually, all Pres were in China before they got shipped here and everywhere else.
Yeah exactly.. cant we just give out free pres and have that warehouse emptied by the locals.. then stock it full of c40s for us good little sprint kids.
Don't they have knock off Plus versions by now?
knock-offs already came out (non-webos)..this time they get the real deal...webos and all. If they do disable wifi...they mite as well get dumped w/ original non-plus pres...this is good for palm for more carriers and more sales..(and rid of excess devices)..if knock-offs were able to sell...the real deal should be e-z...
You mean Pixis...
I wonder what this means to devs.
do apps submitted to China have to go through extra approval steps?
If there's even an App Catalog at all there. :p
And I'd guess they probably will change Google to an approved search as well.
Hope they don't start selling during the New Year celebration (or some other holiday). Nobody will be around to buy them.
Doesn't China Telecom use R-UIM cards? You know, the type of CDMA tech that lets them switch out phones like SIM cards do? If so, I wish Palm would port those over to the states... and convince Sprint to release them like that.
Huge market in China. This is a very positive achievement for PALM. Whatever stock PALM has in-house that isn't sold yet will certainly not be enough to cover the potential demand here.
China Telecom sold about 30 million handsets in 2009, so that is a pretty good number. That is the good news.
Bad news is there are over 500 models of handsets!!! Can you even imagine that?
Add to that the fact that only a fraction of those phones will be higher end smart phones, and only a fraction of purchasers can afford those phones, and no one should be expecting Palm to be selling millions of handsets in China right away.
Definitely good news and one more step down the right path.
Palm Board - "We have an over stock of unsold Pre's and we need to make some cash, where can we get rid of these Pre's... Any ideas?"
Maybe this means I'll finally be able to get Chinese input on my American Pre. Hooray!
More countries, more sales. Simples
Yay for China! Its demand will generate more Pre accessories soon. My jealousy for accessory envy(that other cellphones are inundated with) is waning slowly.
China Telecom Chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu announced that his network will be picking up "BlackBerry devices in May and the Palm Pre in July."
Y NOT Palm Pre in May and BlackBerry devices in July, "DUE NOT MAKE THE SAM MISTAKE" from Verizon Wireless did with the Droid Palm Pre FIRST!!!
That's really cool. Palm finally knows what a big market in China. There are many palm pre users alreadying using an unlocked Spain GSM pre or struggling with an O2 UK with Rebsel Sim II...Getting excited if they can develope an official Chinese input system. :)
just read up on that R-UIM technology, that technology is amazing. Can anyone tell me why no provider in the States has adopted this technology?
According to WatchMouse precentral.net can still be pinged from China. How long before that changes?
Good for Asia!
Now what about Asia-Pacific! Bring it on for the Aussies!!
Wonderful~~
I need built in chinese input. Will Pre support multi language as Iphone?
China comes to the rescue! WebOS's biggest mistake was to launch on CDMA first instead of GSM, and forget about the style-chasing Asian market. Hope it's not too late. Always have been a big fan of Palm products.
It is good to see the Pres expanding into new markets. Refinance Mortgage But what is the point of a feature rich phone when the Chinese government will block all those features?!