Palm Announces China Initiatives

Palm today boosted its commitment to China with a three-tiered advance into the rapidly growing market. Palm has announced new plans to extend Palm's presence in China and advance the company's goal of worldwide geographic and demographic growth. Palm has established a new Pacific R&D and Operations center in Shanghai, announced cooperation with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator, with more than 240 million subscribers and the Treo 680 has been launched in cooperation with CEC Telecom Science and Technology Co. and distribution partner, Beijing Riverwill Communication Technology Co. Ltd.

"We're growing the Palm infrastructure for success in China, an important part of our international-expansion strategy," said John Hartnett, Palm senior vice president, Global Markets. "With a stronger local presence, we believe we can accelerate the success of Treo smartphones across Asia and beyond. And we are thrilled to serve the Chinese marketplace by working with the world's largest carrier, China Mobile."

To meet the growing global opportunity, Palm is establishing its first R&D and Operations Centre in the Asia Pacific region. The Shanghai-based centre will work to accelerate the delivery of next-generation smartphones to mobile operators, partners and customers worldwide; ensure local language capabilities are incorporated into Treo smartphones; and facilitate close collaboration between Palm and its manufacturing partners. The centre will be key to the delivery of new mobile-computing solutions aimed at redefining the smartphone experience through award-winning Treo smartphones.

The Palm Treo 680 smartphone, a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone, will be brought to market with CECT, certified by China Mobile and distributed by Riverwill. According to IDC, the China market is expected to be close to 12.1 million data-centric converged devices shipped by 2011, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 30 percent. This presents a tremendous growth opportunity for Palm Treo smartphones.

"We are pleased that the new Palm Treo 680 supports China Mobile PushMail and Mobile Email, delivering email solutions to even more customers," said Mr. Shen Wei Zhong, deputy general manager, Department of Key Accounts, China Mobile Communication Corporation.