O2 today confirms that the Palm® Pre™ phone will be available in the UK on 16 October exclusively on the O2 network. Customers can purchase the new device directly from O2, the Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and Business partners who are part of O2’s specific partner programme. It will also be available for purchase online from the O2 shop at www.o2.co.uk/shop.

Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 UK said “Today’s announcement reinforces O2’s position as the home of the smartphone. With the addition of the excellent Palm Pre to our already extensive portfolio, we will continue to offer our customers the widest range of the very best devices on the market today.”
“There’s a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries,” said Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc. “We look forward to launching Palm Pre with O2 so people in the UK can see firsthand how Palm webOS offers a new and better smartphone experience.”

Palm Pre for consumers

Palm Pre is free to O2 customers taking out a 24-month contract and to customers taking an 18-month contract at £44.05 or £73.41 per month. See attached table or the O2 website for full tariff options.  All customers will receive unlimited UK data browsing over O2’s HSDPA network and unlimited access to 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone.

Consumer

The Palm Pre will also be sold with some innovative accessories. The Palm Touchstone Charging Dock allows connectionless charging of your Palm webOS™ phone. Palm Touchstone is based on inductive technology based inside the Touchstone Charging Dock which allows you to charge the handset without connecting a wire directly to it. The Touchstone and Back Cover will retail at £44.11 a saving of £10.

Palm Pre for Business

Palm Pre running Palm webOS is a powerful business device, offering Palm Synergy features, multitasking capabilities, a full sliding keyboard, touch screen, robust messaging, GPS, and compatibility with 3G and secure Wi-Fi networks. It delivers business capabilities, including support for Exchange ActiveSync policies.
Palm Pre will be available on current O2 business tariffs as a monthly bolt on, with the device available for free to account holders on all business tariffs from £30.91on a 24 or 36-month contract. Palm Pre business customers can also receive the same benefits as existing O2 business customers including unlimited calls between O2 customers, unlimited calls to ten landlines, shareable minutes and texts between users plus multi-user billing and activation and free, 24x7 access to business customer care specialists.  www.o2.co.uk/business
Palm Pre is the first phone based on the all-new Palm webOS™ software, which brings mobile applications together in a unique and intuitive multi-tasking platform that enables consumers and businesses to connect to their information in more useful and useable ways.(1) Palm webOS introduces Palm Synergy™, which brings your information from the many places it resides into a single, more comprehensive view of your life.
The Palm Pre features a smooth, elegantly rounded ergonomic design and a physical keyboard that slides out only when needed, Palm Pre is engineered to feel natural in your hand and comfortably small in your pocket. When closed, Palm Pre is ideal for phone calls, web browsing, music, photos and videos; when open, Palm Pre is optimized for email and text messaging. With its curved slider and gesture-controlled touch interface, Palm Pre fuses exquisite design with the revolutionary Palm webOS software for fast access to content on the device or web.

About O2

• Telefónica O2 UK Limited is a leading communications company for consumers and businesses in the UK, with 20.7 million mobile customers and 457,000 fixed broadband customers as at 30 June 2009. 
• Telefónica O2 UK Limited is part of Telefónica Europe plc which is a business division of Telefónica S.A. and which owns O2 in the UK, Ireland, Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic, and has 46 million customers.
• In 2006 Telefónica Europe acquired Be*, the UK fixed broadband provider, and in October 2007 O2 launched its broadband service using the Be* network.
• O2 is the naming rights partner of The O2, the world-class entertainment venue.
• O2 was ranked highest in customer satisfaction for both UK mobile and fixed broadband customers according to the J.D. Power and Associates UK Mobile and Fixed Broadband Studies 2009.
• In February 2009 O2 became the first UK mobile operator to be officially certified with the Carbon Trust Standard in recognition of O2’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint and the 15% reduction in energy consumption achieved over the past three years.
• O2 was launched on 1 May 2002 and now has more customers than any other UK mobile network. 
• O2’s UK mobile network covers 99% of the UK’s population.  O2’s 3G network covers over 80% of the UK population and is fully HSDPA-enabled, providing speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps for customers with an HSDPA-enabled device.
• Telefónica Europe also owns 50% of the Tesco Mobile and Tchibo Mobilfunk joint venture businesses in the UK and Germany. 
• For further press information about O2 go to http://mediacentre.o2.co.uk/

APPENDIX

Palm Pre for O2 customers

Palm Pre for O2 business customers                                                                                   

All pricing shown is ex-VAT. 
*O2 Retail, Online and telesales get additional 200 minutes and 400 texts
+UK messages includes MMS and roaming SMS at a ratio of 4:1

About Telefónica

Telefónica is one of the world’s largest telecommunications operators by market capitalisation. Its activities are centred mainly on the fixed and mobile telephony businesses, while its broadband business is the key growth driver underpinning both.  It operates in 25 countries and has a global customer base of 260 million. Telefónica’s growth strategy is focused on the markets in which it has a strong foothold: Spain, Europe and Latin America.  Telefónica is a 100% private sector company with its shares listed in Madrid and other stock exchanges and more than 1.5 million individual shareholders.