Digitimes Maintains Two Palm Phones Delayed

Posted By: Ryan Kairer Monday, March 23, 2009 10:30:25 AM

Delay Pedal A questionable, yet alarming, report on a possibly significant Palm phone delay was published this morning by Taiwanese tech news site Digitimes. Citing a source from the Chinese-language Commercial Times, the article claims that Compal will be delaying shipments of two unnamed Palm smartphones.

Shipments of Palm's two smartphones will be delayed as Compal is waiting for Qualcomm's new chipset solutions that will enable better performance, said the paper.

At this point we can safely assume that the above is not in reference to the Palm Pre. First of all, Compal is known to be one of Palm's Windows Mobile handset suppliers, and it was recently reported that the Palm Pre would be manufactured by Chi Mei Communication Systems. Also, Palm has already come out and rebutted the article stating there is "No change in our previously announced plan to have the Pre available in the first half of 2009." (via Engadget)

Several of Palm's recent Windows Mobile handsets have used Qualcomm chipsets, such as the Treo Pro and 800w, so the Digitimes rumor could confirm the existence of one or more upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5-based units. Since Windows Mobile is well known to be much more resource intensive, this would likely fit with the supposed delay reasoning.

Finally, despite appearing on a leaked Vodafone slide over a year ago for release in Q3 2008, Palm's Treo 500 successor, "Wanda" never again saw the light of day. So a remote possibility still exists that Palm could be intending to revisit the world of low-cost Windows Mobile smartphones in order to take the place of the soon-to-expire Palm OS-powered Centro.

Kris Keilhack contributed to this report. Picture via Aqua Effector.