While we’ve all been talking about the success of the Palm Centro which carved out an impressive 2 million unit market share for itself in the $99 smartphone market, something has been quietly happening at Verizon. Slowly but surely many of Verizon’s top selling smartphones are now priced the same - or lower - than the Palm Centro. As outlined in the August 1, 2008 Barron’s Tech Trader Daily, Verizon has slashed prices on six of their most popular smartphones by 20% to 47%. These moves are likely in direct response to the recent iPhone 3G release. Still, suddenly Palm Centro finds itself no longer occupying a unique price point in the market. How much longer can it be until Palm is forced to market the Centro as a $49 or $ 29 smartphone? Almost as interesting is the rapid drop in the price of Blackberry’s which until recently were almost always premium priced.

Barrons