Next Palm Pre WebOS Phone Will Be Cheap, Maybe Centro 2

Palm Infocenter has “heard from a seemingly reliable firsthand source” that Palm’s working on the Centro 2, which’ll run the Pre’s slobber-inducing WebOS and hit Sprint this fall.

It goes along with what Sascha at PCMag (who would only print reliable tips) has heard: Not only will the WebOS be on lotsa Palm devices in as many form factors as colours of the rainbow, but the next WebOS may be “a lower-cost, candybar-style phone without a QWERTY keyboard.”

So even if the next WebOS phone from Palm isn’t called the Centro 2, between the two rumours, it looks likely it’ll be a cheaper model. And why not? The Palm Centro sold like bottled water in hell, despite running a dated-as-balls OS. Okay, cannibalisation—why buy the $US199 (hopefully) model model when there’s a $US149 or even $US99 model hanging around?

But given Palm’s present position, grabbing as much marketshare with its OS as fast as possible should be (and is) its top priority, and having a less fancy phone at an easy-to-swallow price is the best way to do that. It just needs to look sexy and be cheap, whatever it’s called—though Centro 2 in all its unimagination does sound a lot less stupid than Pre, so maybe Palm should stick with that. [PalmInfo via BGR, from whom I also cribbed the image]