Orange goes for non-Microsoft (Palm) SmartPhones

[Guest ContactBot]

Orange, Europe's third largest mobile group behind Vodafone Group Plc, and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, said it wanted to offer customers an alternative to high-tech, Microsoft Corp.-enabled phone launched last year.

Orange, which is the largest mobile phone company in Britain and France, launched its first "smart phone", the SPV (Sound, Picture, Video) last November. The SPV is the first mobile unit powered by Microsoft's Smartphone 2002 operating system.

But although 60,000 SPVs have been sold to date, sales have lagged less sophisticated picture phones, such as Vodafone's Vodafone Live! version, and disappointed some analysts. Orange denied that it had been disillusioned by SPV sales.

We just don't want to get into bed with one specific operating system and we don't think that would be good for the industry, We want to give people the chance to choose Palm.

Source: msmobiles.com

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Couple of weeks back, my wife bought a handspring Treo 180 from Morgans (New Oxford Street, Birmingham and Manchester, + online!) for £147+VAT SIM-free. OK, it's "black and white only", but it's slimmer than a fag packet, shorter than an SPV, has a QWERTY keyboard, runs any Palm software (without being decertified first!) has a great battery life, and she LOVES it. It actually takes up LESS room in her handbag than her old Ericsson, yet with the "lid" open, (it's a "clamshell" type) it's a sensible size.

[Guest vijay555]

http://www.handspring.com/company/pr_q3_co...#donna_comments

Don't think too much of Treo's, although i've used Palm OS and think it's quite efficient. However, don't think the Treo is the convergence device that SPV is. So not too much competition.

A Palm 5 device slim as a "fag packet" with gprs, bluetooth,wifi, keyboard and uses a "Mr Fusion" battery pack would be great, but it'd still take quite a lot to get me away from PocketPc, despite it being a bloaty big boy.

V