Palm Centro heads to Verizon, in stores tomorrow for $99
Come on, T-Mobile, all we need is you to get on board now and that'll make a perfect Yahtzee! for Palm with its surprise hit, the Centro. Thanks to Verizon's expected announcement today, the top three US carriers now carry …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Centro has been Palm's unlikely volume story since its late-2007 debut — first teased in an official leaked shot, then launched on Sprint with color variants like the black and red Centro models. Now Verizon is picking it up at $99, extending a Palm–Verizon relationship that already produced the Treo 755p late last year.
First-order effects
- Verizon customers can buy the Centro in stores starting tomorrow at $99, giving Palm its third US carrier for the device and a much wider addressable market beyond Sprint's base.
- Palm gets a second consecutive carrier win for the Centro, cementing what was framed as a surprise hit rather than a niche experiment.
Second-order effects
- T-Mobile is now the conspicuous holdout among the big four, facing pressure to sign the Centro or risk losing entry-level smartphone buyers to rivals.
- At $99, the Centro sets a price anchor that forces other carriers and handset makers to respond in the sub-$100 messaging-phone segment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cheap compact smartphones distributed across every major carrier become the industry's volume engine — a playbook Palm would later try to repeat with higher-end devices like the Pre, whose own Verizon path proved far less smooth.
- Carrier breadth, not just hardware specs, emerges as the decisive competitive factor in the mainstream phone market.
The trend: The Centro's rapid multi-carrier expansion marks an early data point in the shift toward affordable, mass-market smartphones sold through every major US carrier rather than exclusive single-carrier deals.