Palm Pre Heads To Canada

Palm is slowly making its Pre smartphone available outside the United States, and Canadian users can now snag the handset on Bell Mobility.

The touch-screen smartphone can be had for $199.95 with a new three-year contract, which is generally the standard length of Canadian mobile deals. Like Sprint Nextel, Bell Mobility also uses CDMA technology for its voice and data services.

"Bell is only the second carrier in the world to offer the award-winning Palm Pre, which is getting rave reviews for its uniquely attractive design and revolutionary Palm webOS mobile platform," said Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Mobility, in a statement. "We've seen exceptionally strong advance interest in Palm Pre and have worked closely with Palm to ensure we have sufficient stock on hand to satisfy demand."

The Pre has a capacitive touch-screen handset, as well as a full QWERTY keyboard. It also has Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth, multimedia features, and 8 GB of onboard memory. The operating system has been praised for its ability to multitask, and it can draw in information from sources like Outlook and Facebook into a single, finger-friendly user interface.

Palm was once the leading smartphone maker in the United States, but it has quickly lost ground to the likes of Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry lineup. Palm really needs the Pre and webOS to be successful in order to make a comeback in the smartphone space.

The Pre was first released for Sprint earlier this year, and it broke the carrier's sales records. Palm is looking to sell the Pre in multiple markets, and it said a GSM version will be sold in Europe later this year.

Most companies are just starting the hard work of mobilizing workforces by bringing the software they use to smartphones. InformationWeek analyzed this issue in an independent report, and it can be downloaded here (registration required).