Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus Are Coming to Verizon Exclusively January 25
The Palm Pre plus removed the navigation button, has 2x internal RAM, 16GB storage, and a built-in inductive back cover for Touchstone inductive charging. — The Pixi Plus is still “thin and lightweight” …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes an arc that has run since September, when TheStreet.com reported that Palm's arrival at Verizon had been shelved, followed by Phone Arena's December confirmation that the Pre Plus was headed there alongside the Motorola Devour. What changed at CES is that the Verizon devices are not just ports of the Sprint hardware: Palm announced refreshed 'Plus' variants — double the internal RAM, 16GB of storage, a removed navigation button, and a built-in Touchstone-compatible inductive back cover — launching exclusively on Verizon January 25.
The exclusivity matters because it makes Verizon, not Sprint, the launch carrier for the next generation of webOS hardware, and Palm paired the announcement with its new carrier and developer programs per its official blog — a sign the company is scaling distribution and ecosystem together.
First-order effects
- Sprint's exclusive grip on the Pre ends as a functionally superior variant debuts on Verizon, giving Palm a second major U.S. channel exactly when the original Pre's momentum needs one.
Second-order effects
- Verizon gains a differentiated webOS lineup to counter Sprint's Pre marketing, while Sprint faces pressure to respond with pricing or its own hardware refresh to keep the franchise from bleeding across carriers.
Third-order effects
- The move cements carrier-exclusive hardware revisions as a standard playbook — carriers trading shelf space and subsidies for timed exclusives — and puts Palm's viability on whether multi-carrier reach can sustain webOS's app ecosystem against larger platforms.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are racing from single-carrier launches to exclusive multi-carrier hardware refreshes as the battleground for U.S. mobile share shifts from device design to distribution.