Hasta La Gadget!

A dubious rumor from The Street floating around about how Verizon was snubbing the Pre due to lackluster sales and no outlet for its VCast Store (which was a bit too thin to make it onto these virtual pages, in fact) has been questioned by a couple of analysts today. According to Deutsche Bank’s Jonathan Goldberg and Morgan Keegan & Co’s Tavis McCourt, a combination of supply chain orders and Palm’s own 2010 financial projections — not to mention Verizon’s long history with Palm — all point to a Pre launch on Verizon early next year, as previously rumored by the WSJ and confirmed by Verizon itself in July. Jonathan specifically called the new rumor “off base” and “incorrect,” while Tavis says that “We do not have insight as to the marketing support Palm will get from Verizon, but we see little risk in not getting a placement at this carrier.” Analyst fight!

Read – Analyst debunk on AllThingsD
Read – Original story on The Street

Filed under: Cellphones

Rumors of a Pre-less Verizon “off base” according to analysts originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could Intel’s new Moblin 2.1 OS make a dent against Windows in the mobile and desktop markets?

At this week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chipmaker debuted a beta version of its Moblin 2.1 open-source operating system targeted to run on a variety of devices, including smartphones, Netbooks, nettops, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and in-car systems.

Moblin 2.1 will compete with other open-source operating systems like Google’s Android and bump up against Microsoft in the burgeoning nettop arena.

Originally developed for Netbooks, Moblin 2.1 (short for mobile Linux) will come in three flavors–one for handhelds, another for Netbooks, and a third for nettops.

In the market for handheld gadgets such as smartphones and MIDs, Moblin 2.1 will run on Atom chip-based devices. The beta demoed by Intel at IDF showed off capabilities for touch-screen and gesture input. The new interface will also let users switch among different open applications and will provide shortcuts to social-networking apps.

The Moblin 2.1 Web browser will also support Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 technology to run interactive Web-based apps.

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Looking for a good excuse to buy a new Palm Pre? If the whole Verizon fallout thing from earlier today wasn’t enough to push you over the edge, perhaps this will: Amazon has started selling the phone for $99, that’s down from its already lowered price of $149.

All with a two-year service plan from Sprint, naturally.

Holding off on buying a Palm Pre until the smartphone hits Verizon? You may be waiting a long while. Word is that the wireless carrier has turned down the opportunity to support the first WebOS handset, a deal that was set to go into effect in January of next year.

This is all very backroom-type stuff. The Street is citing a number of anonymous sources who told the site that Verizon was less than enthusiastic about the Palm Pre’s performance thus far. The other deal killer was Palm’s unwillingness to stick VCast on the device, which, let’s face it, sounds like the Verizon we all know and sometimes tolerate.

The addition of Verizon’s propriety walled garden software wouldn’t really mesh with the app store than Palm has been pushing on the device in

Apple is likely ready to continue its forward march of slight system upgrades with the launch of a new refreshed iMac line. Word on the street (read: Taiwanese factory floor) is that the company is ready to introduce the updated all-in-one “as early as this month,” which doesn’t really include that many more days.

According to Apple Insider, the systems will be run a dual-core processor, be cheaper than their predecessor and will feature a new, thinner design. Beyond that, the rumored details are pretty scarce.