July 3 - 12:50pm EDT   Ahead of a scheduled UK launch event next week, Dutch wireless provider Hi has posted a product page on its website advertising the Palm Pre smartphone. Hi is a sub-brand of KPN, which has ties to Telefonica. As Telefonica runs UK carrier O2, which was reported to be the exclusive carrier of the Pre, the posting implies that Telefonica may have landed a multi-country deal. The product page reveals Hi will sell the Pre only subsidized with a contract. [full story]

July 2 - 11:55am EDT   Sales of the Palm Pre have cooled off to where supply is keeping up with demand, JPMorgan analyst Paul Coster said in an investment note today. He believes that about 270,000 Pres will have shipped in the first month of sales but that waiting lists have largely been reduced, revealing a near-ideal balance in what Palm ships each day. About 40,000 of the smartphones are estimated to now ship each week through Sprint directly, while more should also arrive through Best Buy and Radio Shack. [full story]

July 1 - 8:40pm EDT   The iPhone once again leads Consumer Reports' smartphone ratings, beating competing products such as the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm. The organization considered Apple's new 3GS handset to lead in categories such as battery life, multimedia, navigation and Internet browsing, while integrating a superior display. [full story]

July 1 - 3:10pm EDT   Palm's UK event for the Pre will likely reveal O2 to be the sole carrier if tips are authentic. More than one source has told The Guardian that earlier rumors are true and that Palm is likely to imitate Apple's strategy for the island nation, which both gives O2 sole network rights and Carphone Warehouse the only third-party rights to sell the phone on O2's behalf. Reportedly, it has also echoed O2's coup for the iPhone by thwarting an attempt by Orange to land the same deal. [full story]

July 1 - 10:05am EDT   Palm today told the UK press that it will hold an event July 7th regarding the Pre. The company stops short of confirming it as a launch event, but it's commonly assumed by Pocket-lint and others that the gathering next week will provide details of Pre with GSM and HSPA-based 3G and will likely include a release window as well as details of which carriers will sell the smartphone. Pricing is also a possibility. [full story]

June 30 - 7:55am EDT   Palm may have sold as many as 300,000 Pre phones in less than a month on sale, according to a investor's note by Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder. He estimates that about 120,000 Pres were available on launch day but that these sold out within days and that about 15,000 examples of the multi-touch phone are being made every day, leading to the final estimate for the month. As many as 1 million phones could reach Sprint by the end of the first quarter of sales, which for Palm finishes at the end of August. [full story]

June 26 - 3:45pm EDT   Palm chief Jon Rubinstein during the company's fiscal results call yesterday evening detailed the company's stance on licensing webOS as well as some of the early reaction to the Pre. Addressing a question on whether Palm would ever let other companies make webOS phones, the executive was emphatic that there were no current plans for this but explained that it was "not a religious issue" for the company. Although not directly stated, the implication was that Palm didn't share Apple's opinion that software exclusivity was essential to integrating with its hardware. [full story]

June 26 - 12:35pm EDT   Sprint today took a more direct shot at Apple with the posting of a new print ad for the Palm Pre. The large one-page ad centers on the "perfect timing" of the Pre being available just as original iPhone contracts end and underscores the features Palm's phone handles best versus the iPhone, including true app multitasking, real-time notifications and smartphone plans that are potentially less expensive over the two-year span of a contract. [full story]

June 25 - 5:50pm EDT   Palm on Thursday disclosed its fourth-quarter and fiscal-year 2009 results, indicating a $753 million net loss for the year. Smartphone sales continued to slide, with shipments down 62-percent for the quarter and 25-percent for the year. The Palm Pre was not included in the numbers, as the launch will instead serve as a starting point for the company's first quarter of FY10. [full story]

June 25 - 10:40am EDT   Research in Motion is potentially in trouble as discounts it has been counting on for its smartphones are about to end, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu. Citing checks, he claims Verizon's popular buy one, get one (BOGO) promo for the BlackBerry Curve 8330 should end on Saturday the 27th and that it will effectively boost the price of a BlackBerry Storm as a result. Although less expensive than the original $199 launch price, the Storm will move to a fixed $149 price but won't qualify for a BOGO discount that took it down to $99, effectively giving buyers a free extra phone for the Storm's regular price. [full story]

June 24 - 4:25pm EDT   The web browsing on the just-launched iPhone 3GS is fast enough that it not only beats immediate competitors but even Apple's own claimed testing, mobile ad provider Medialets finds. Using the same SunSpider JavaScript benchmark Apple has used to demonstrate the added speed, the firm says the faster iPhone took about 16.5 seconds to complete the benchmark, or just a third the time of an iPhone 3G with the same iPhone OS 3.0 release. The speed is well above Apple's general claim of having "2X faster" performance across its newer device. [full story]

June 24 - 9:30am EDT   Sprint's continued shortages of the Palm Pre could lead to a massive spike in Palm's sales for its current quarter, RBC analyst Mark Abramsky reports in a new investment note today. The researcher esimates that 150,000 Pre smartphones have shipped so far and that as many as 550,000 could ship by the end of Palm's current quarter. Both are up significantly from earlier predictions and could offset a drop in Centro and Treo phone numbers to 258,000. [full story]

June 24 - 7:40am EDT   Apple's newest iPhone actually costs slightly more to make than the older version in spite of the more modest update, iSuppli says. The iPhone 3GS' total bill of materials amounts to $178.96 for a 16GB model, or slightly more than the previous $174.33 of the 8GB iPhone 3G. Some of the cost difference is attributed to recent rises in the prices of NAND flash memory; although 16GB costs less to make than it did a year earlier, a small rebound due to economy-driven supply cutbacks means Apple has had to absorb some costs to double its storage. [full story]

June 23 - 5:40pm EDT   Sprint CFO Bob Brust forecasts shortages of the Pre smartphone to continue for a while, while the company is still gauging the impact of the recent iPhone 3GS launch. Palm released its device several weeks before Apple's WWDC event, with analysts estimating sales of approximately 50,000 units. [full story]

June 19 - 3:45pm EDT   Palm on Friday said it hoped to address a dearth of apps for the Pre and webOS by stepping up the pace of its early access program for developers. The smartphone designer now plans to let in developers "as quickly as resources allow" and expects the pool of active developers to swell from "hundreds to thousands" in the near future. Palm also plans to publish more of the content from the program and will let developers talk more freely about what they can do with the webOS SDK. [full story]