This article originally appeared on Brighthand.com.
Offering users all the major advantages of a smartphone at a user-friendly price, Palm has announced that the Centro has sold two million devices. Supporting both CDMA
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and GSM, the Centro offers more features than many higher priced non-smartphone devices.
The Palm Centro has been a signifiant bright spot for Palm. While having a lower price than the Treo models that came before and after it, it has found a large following, with over 2 million Centros sold worldwide since its launch last fall.
Sold in more than 25 countries on both GSM and CDMA carriers, the Centro's popularity can be attributed primarily to its low price. At its introduction, it was a $99 smartphone (with 2-year contract).
Featuring better specifications than many non-smartphone models priced higher, and with lower data plan fees, the Centro has found a niche as a suitable device for many who want a smartphone, but not the high cost generally associated with them.
Centro is also a top-10 Internet device
The low cost to purchase the Centro and associated data plans has also made this smartphone the #7 most used mobile device to access the Internet, according to the advertising agency AdMob.
The Centro first made it into the top-10 in May (ranked #8) and has since picked up steam as a preferred device to access wireless information, according to the latest report from this agency.
The AdMob report, which analyzes worldwide data to gauge mobile Internet use among devices able to receive mobile ads, also noted that 24.3% of worldwide ad requests in June were from smartphones, up from 22.4 percent in May. Of these numbers, the Palm Centro ranked #2 in the U.S. and #3 worldwide in terms of mobile advertising reach.
More information about the Palm Centro
The Palm Centro is a QWERTY-keyboard enabled smartphone featuring Palm OS 5.4, 3G networking (in the CDMA version), a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a host of bundled applications including Google Maps, Documents to Go 10, and Pocket Tunes Deluxe.
More information about the Palm Centro and supported carriers can be found on Palm's website.