Palm Eos En Route to Palm in October? 12

An anonymous source has provided PreCentral.net with information that appears detailed enough to be worth reporting.  The gist: shipments of the Palm Eos to Palm are indeed set to begin in October, which increases the chances for a 2010 release.

Earlier this week an analyst had speculated that the Eos would be delayed until 2010, only to be rebutted by a DigiTimes report that Palm would receive 400,000 units of the Eos in October. Based on our source, it appears there's a little grain of truth in both reports.

Apparently, Palm is set to receive 80,000 units or so in October, an order size that is reduced by two or threefold from the original order. Palm is set to receive similarly-sized shipments in the months after.

The Eos has yet to appear in two more traditional pre-release sources - the FCC or carrier testing leaks, so guessing at a release date is still difficult. The device is still expected to hit AT&T first (although we've heard from people claiming to have seen the Sprint version).

In addition, we are told that to-date, Palm has received shipments of around 800,000 Palm Pre phones -- though of course how many of those have made their way to consumers is an open question.  The good news is that Palm has been steadily ramping up production month over month, and so the coming months should see unit shipments to Palm increase.

As always, take silly-season, pre-release rumors with a grain of salt (or more). The Eos, if you don't recall, is rumored to be a slightly lower-end device running webOS, with 4 gigs of internal storage and a slightly smaller screen than the Pre.