Ladies and Gentleman, unlimited smartphone data from AT&T is a thing of the past. Or at least it will be as of June 7th. Starting that day, AT&T will introduce two new data plans to replace its current $30 unlimited smartphone plan. Without a bunch of preamble and crying over the changes, here’s the skinny on the plans that AT&T says will make it possible for “more affordable for more people to enjoy the benefits of the mobile Internet.”

DataPlus

• 200MB of data for $15 per month. AT&T says this will be enough data to meet the needs of 65% of its smartphone users. If you go over the 200MB cap, AT&T will charge you $15 per 200MB of overages.

DataPro

• 2GB of data for $25 per month. According to AT&T, only 2% of its smartphone customers manage to blow through more than 2GB of data per month. Go over the limit and you’ll be charged $10 per GB.

Tethering

• Smartphone users that want tethering and have a DataPro plan can add the feature for $20 per month. This means you’ll be sharing 2GB between your phone and your laptop for $45 per month. Not great at all, but remember this: A 5GB data card plan costs $60 per month. This means — with overages — you’ll be able to have 5GB of smartphone and tethering data for $75 and not have to worry about two contracts. Oh, and “Tethering for iPhones will be available when Apple releases iPhone OS 4 this summer.” About bloody time.

iPad

• The $29.99 unlimited data plan for the iPad has not escaped the chop. Starting June 7th, new iPad customers will have two options: $15 for 250MB and $25 for 2GB of data. Any iPad customers who wish to stick to the $30 unlimited plan are free to do so, but AT&T is hoping most people will opt to save $5 and change plans.

As much as it hurts to see unlimited plans die off (and don’t pretend we didn’t know it was coming), the new rates will make data more accessible to those who don’t have a lot of coins in their coffer. And again, to be perfectly clear, you are welcome to stay on the current $30 unlimited smartphone data plan, but if you think you can squeak by on the new plans and save $5 to $15, AT&T will move you over to the DataPlus or DataPro plan without renewing your data commitment. Awww, so sweet.

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According to mobile ad firm Smaato, U.S.-based Symbian users are 2.7 times more likely to click on a mobile ad than their iPhone OS using countrymen. The findings, based on 6 billion ads served up by 40 ad companies in the month of April, are quite puzzling when considering the infinitesimally small share of the U.S. smartphone market Symbian currently occupies. But GigaOm’s Kevin Tofel has what sounds like a very reasonable explanation for the stats: “Symbian is a more mature operating system in terms of age, and both advertisers and developers have used that time to optimize mobile advertising on the platform. Apple’s iPhone OS is a relative youngster compared to Symbian, having only initially launched on a product in June of 2007.” Kind of makes one wonder why the FTC is making such a stink over Google’s attempt at acquiring AdMob and the launch of Apple’s iAd. Moving on… Anyone else think it’s pretty incredible that feature phone users click on more ads than Android, BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Phone users?

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WebOS devices have long since extended their reach beyond the cozy confines of United States, but unfortunately paid apps have yet to be made available as they are in the US. This could all change in one week’s time, however, as Palm has notified developers that they will be able to sell apps through the App Catalog in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Mexico and Spain starting on the 31st of March. If all goes according to plan, a large number of paid apps will be available on day one simply because Palm has made it easy for developers to get in on the international market: resubmit the app, check off where you want it to be sold and relax while the app is rushed through the approval process.

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A lot happened in the US smartphone market from October 2009 to January 2010, but thankfully there are companies like comScore kicking about to help us make sense of just which platforms were the biggest winners and losers during this period. The biggest platform was not surprisingly Google’s Android which saw an uptick of 4.3% to a total of 7.1% thanks in part to the successful launches of handsets like the DROID, DROID ERIS and Hero. RIM’s BlackBerry OS, which faired second best with a gain of 1.7% continued to dominate the total smartphone market at 43%, but one has to wonder if RIM could have done just a little bit more. After all, it did launch the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Curve 8530 and Storm2 during these months. Apple’s iPhone didn’t do as well as many would have guessed, but its 0.3% increase makes quite a bit of sense when you consider the tradition of people holding out on iPhone purchases in the six months leading up the summer release of the devices later iteration. Nonetheless, it does hold a 25.1% stake in the US smartphone market. When it comes to market share, one’s success is another’s misfortune. Not exactly a stranger to losing ground, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile managed to shed 4.0% thanks in part to what can be politely summed up as a general indifference to its current platform (how things will change). After this, we saw Palm with a loss of 2.1%. In Palm’s defence a lot of this can be attributed to people finally getting around to ditching Palm OS, but the fact remains that thing’s aren’t going to well for a company that many felt was on the path to recovery just 15 months ago.

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Verizon Wireless may be turning it up a notch again and adding not one, but three new smartphones to its lineup in early 2010. The eclectic group is rumored to include the Windows Mobile-powered LG VS750, the Android-based Motorola Devour A555 and the Palm Pre Plus. The LG VS750 is LG’s first smartphone offering for Verizon Wireless. Running Windows Mobile 6.5 and with both CDMA and GSM on board for global roaming, it is sure to please all those business-oriented, world travelers in our midst. The Motorola A555 Devour is also known as our old friend the Motorola Calgary, which we broke the news on almost one year ago today. The Devour will be the DROID’s little brother and is expected to arrive in early 2010 with Android 2.1, MOTOBLUR and a 3 megapixel camera. Last but not least, the Palm Pre Plus will be Verizon’s first webOS device and is most likely the reason for Verizon’s new online training course touting the benefits of Palm and webOS. The significance of the addition of “Plus” to its name is unknown — was it chosen by the marketing department as a way to distinguish the Verizon Pre from the Sprint Pre? Or will this handset indeed be a never-seen-before, much improved Palm Pre?

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Oh the soap opera between the Palm Pre and Verizon Wireless — it’s denied, it’s confirmed, it’s tweeted. VZWOffers has reiterated announced that Verizon will indeed have the Pre “early” next year. America’s largest carrier will seemingly have the BlackBerry Storm 2, Motorola Droid, Tour, and Pre in their lineup at the same time — Big Red is starting to show some love for the hardware!

Thanks, Matt!

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AdMob, a leading mobile ad service provider, issues mobile metrics and analysis each month and today it has released April data. Key points from AdMob’s press release:

• While Gartner estimated global smartphone sales represented 12 percent of total device sales in 2008, 35 percent of AdMob’s worldwide ad requests in April 2009 came from smartphones. This means that smartphones accounted for nearly 3 times more usage than their relative market share.
• The iPhone OS had 8 percent of the smartphone market, but generated 43 percent of mobile Web requests and 65 percent of HTML usage.
• The Android OS share of the smartphone market was less than 1 percent, but generated 3 percent of mobile Web requests and 9 percent of HTML usage.
• The Symbian OS had 52 percent of the smartphone market, but generated only 36 percent of mobile Web usage and 7 percent of HTML usage.
• Usage of mobile Web sites greatly out paces usage of HTML sites on smartphones running the Symbian and RIM Operating System (OS).
• 24 percent of US requests were made over a Wi-Fi network. The top five Wi-Fi devices in terms of usage were the iPhone, iPod touch, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1), and HTC Dash.

There are definitely some interesting takeaways here — the most interesting to us is actually the Symbian stat. Symbian has 52 percent of the market but generated only 7 percent of HTML usage. 7 percent! Conversely, the iPhone holds about 8 percent of the smartphone market but accounts for 65 percent of mobile HTML usage. Even Android, which accounts for 1 percent of smartphones worldwide, topped Symbian with 9 percent of HTML traffic.

The Webkit-based S60 browser is certainly capable of displaying HTML but as we’ve commented on numerous occasions, it’s clunky and slow. We really (REALLY) hope this will be a particular area of focus as the Symbian Foundation continues work on Symbian^2 because S60 5th Edition hardly addresses the issue. Oh and RIM, your browser is even worse… But you know this.

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It goes without saying that amongst the earliest of early adopters to the Palm Pre will be Palm loyalists whose migration from PalmOS to WebOS will surely leave them missing some of the apps that they have grown to love and live by for the past 13 years. To help make the transition easier and allow the fanatics live in the past, MotionApp has obtained special rights to code the only Palm approved PalmOS simulator for WebOS entitled Classic. While it will not be able to access the heart of WebOS, Classic be able to run over 30,000 PalmOS applications at speeds nearly twice as fast as they would run on a Treo 700p meaning that the odds are the crème de la crème of PalmOS apps won’t be left behind. At this time neither the pricing nor availability of Classic has been announced, something we’re not too surprised about given that Palm has yet to tip the world off as to the pricing structure of App Catalog or a release date for the Pre itself.

[Via Engadget]

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A little blue bird landed on our window sill this morning to let us in on a little secret – Alltel is all set to launch the Palm Treo Pro this Thursday March 5th. After a $125 rebate, the Treo Pro will set Alltel subscribers back $199 on a 2-year contract. The price isn’t all that bad for a new smartphone, especially considering it has the golden trifecta known as 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, but when we see an American carrier charge more than a Canadian carrier we do start to panic just a little. Just one word of caution before anyone gets too excited — this might just be for divested customers only. C’est la vie, no?

Thanks, R!

What we have here, folks, is a classic case of a blessing in disguise. After a bit of a false start, Sprint seems to have semi-officially pulled the Treo Pro launch until late February. Bad news, right? Well, sort of. First off, the company is attempting to appease anyone that ordered the device early with a $25 account credit. More importantly, however, it sounds like the Treo Pro could be the first Sprint device to allow for simultaneous voice and data usage. Granted, the news comes from a bit of a dubious source, but if it turns out to be true it could mark a bit of a milestone for the carrier. The EV-DO Rev. A band is technically capable of allowing this work, but the CDMA world has yet to enjoy the pleasure of surfing the mobile web while attempting to pay attention to a rambling family member on the other end of the line. Such luxury has been afforded to the GSM world since the early days of 3G, so we can only hope that Sprint makes this move official. In the mean time, we’re looking into starting a support group for the 12-13 folks out there that are actually eagerly awaiting the Treo Pro, especially with the impending arrival of the Palm Pre. Way to cannibalize your own sales by pushing the introduction of the last of your previous generation devices closer and closer to the introduction of your next gen. flagship device. Seriously, Sprint/Palm…we’re impressed.

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After seeing the massive amount of buzz Palm generated surrounding the announcement of its Pre and new mobile operating system WebOS, mobile developers are undoubtedly just as excited as everyone else to get in on the action. Good news, mobile coders; an anonymous developer who has spent some time with Palm’s new Mojo SDK has shared some insight as far as when you can expect. Just like WebOS and the Pre itself, it appears as though Palm’s new SDK is a breath of fresh air as well. The shrouded dev essentially called the WebOS development experience the antithesis of iPhone development on several levels. From SDK usability and incorporated technologies to OS integration and even developer relations – it seems as though Palm covered all of its bases when building its savior. Palm has already made it known that it will launch its own on-device App Store, dubbed App Catalog, and this gushing account of the developer experience is yet another check mark in the Palm column. Throw a few more handsets and a few more big carrier deals into the mix and Palm might have to wear shades…

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Nope, it’s not over yet. More Pre news is coming down the pipes and this time it comes from rumorsville. The two biggest pieces of the puzzle omitted from the Palm hoopla yesterday were pricing info and timing for the GSM version. Many have speculated that Pre pricing would fall in line with the iPhone 3G to create the best fighting chance Palm and Sprint have of competing. If Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-review is to be believed however, that sentiment is out the door. How does double sound? According to Murtazin’s sources, the Pre will launch with a steep price tag of $399. Wow. Of course the original price of Apple’s base iPhone was $399 but plenty has changed since then and the Pre isn’t quite the jaw-dropper Apple’s handset was when it first saw daylight. We have no reason to doubt Murtazin but we do hope his sources are wrong about this one, especially considering the fact that we will almost certainly see a new iPhone released before Sprint can drop the Pre price down to mass-attainability level.

As far as the GSM version of the Pre is concerned, Murtazin’s sources state an early 2H release in Europe with pricing in the neighborhood of $500 – $550 USD. While carriers are still unknown at this point, the pricing certainly sounds about right if we’re looking at $400 from Sprint. Of course the release of a GSM / WCDMA-compatible Pre was never really a question but it’s nice to have a possible time frame, for Europe at least. Looks like it’s time to dust off the phone number of your favorite mobile importer.

[Via Unwired View]

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You most certainly already knew that Palm’s newly announced OS, WebOS, was codenamed Nova prior to launch. If you didn’t then we invite you to stop by slightly more often and up your gadget cred a bit. What you probably didn’t know however, was that Palm’s knight in shining armor was codenamed Castle. How apropos. The fellas at Palm must have been so exhausted from making sure everything Pre-related happened on time that they forgot to update the copy in an automatically generated confirmation email. You know, kind of like how the BlackBerry Storm is still referred to as the BlackBerry Thunder in some OS files to this day. It’s okay Palm, you did a hell of a job keeping the wraps on your recent announcements and it’s safe to say both the Pre and WebOS are pretty widely acclaimed at this point. Get some rest and then see if you can’t get around to cleaning that up.

Thanks, Rob!

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There you have it folks, the mystery Palm phone and OS are no longer a mystery and the world has now received its first glimpse at Palm’s hopeful savior. First impressions mean everything and for the time being it’s safe to say we were supremely wowed. Seriously, did you ever imagine you’d see the day when Palm would release a handset and OS combo so perfectly evolutionary and well designed? Once the initial high wears off however, we’re all brought back down to reality – a reality where Palm is a company on the verge of falling apart and the Pre represents what is likely the first in a series of handsets that will make or break it, literally. Is this sharp little piece of kit up to the task?

In another world, the Pre might very well devastate competitive offerings. Without having held the device of course, the hardware looks gorgeous and the new OS looks like it could just be the closest thing to a masterpiece we’ll see in 2009. What’s more, any web developer with a few 101 classes under his/her belt will be able to develop apps for Palm’s new OS with little or nothing new to be learned. The biggest wild card now however, might just be Sprint. By tying itself to a struggling carrier, Palm placed all of its eggs into a very, very fragile basket. Sure, there are pros and cons; an obvious pro is that the Pre will become a huge tool for Sprint. Sprint will invest tons of time, money and other resources into launching and marketing the Pre because, well, what else does it have going on? A WiMAX launch in Podunk, Iowa (calm down, that was a joke)? The Pre will be Sprint’s golden boy and it will get all of the love and attention Palm could ever imagine. Ok, so what’s the problem?

The major con, which is equally as obvious as the benefits mentioned above, is that Sprint is hemorrhaging subscribers and struggling more than any other US carrier to stay afloat. It is losing money like a Lions fan who can’t stop betting on the home team and short of recent layoffs, it is showing no signs of turning the ship around. By partnering with Sprint on this launch, Palm has basically created a relationship where each major player is standing on shaky ground. Does Sprint have a good network? Of course it does – blazing data speeds are nothing new to Sprint subscribers. There are tons of other factors however, such as customer service woes, spotty coverage and a Vista-like stigma that will prevent many from even considering the Pre when it is launched later this year. No, the Pre will certainly not result in a tremendous surge of business funneling through from competing carriers as the iPhone did for AT&T. Last time we checked, Palm fans are hardly as cult-like and fanatical as Apple fans and Joe the Plumber simply doesn’t care that much – that’s why he carries a RAZR.

We want the Pre to be a success, there’s no question. In fact, you can be sure you’ll find a few of these bad boys roaming the halls of BGR HQ. We also want Sprint to figure out how to plug all of the cracks in its dam. The issue here is that there may just be too many hurdles blocking Palm’s path to success and in its current state, Palm is most definitely no Dayron Robles. We can only hope that Palm managed to ink a good deal with Sprint that will allow them to bring its new handset to other carriers before it’s too late and upcoming competitive handsets make Joe the Plumber forget all about the Pre.

Things are happening for Palm with news of its upcoming OS and the first of a family of new devices. Of course, how could its compete with the iPhone and BlackBerry without its very own mobile app store? After partnering with PocketGear, Palm now has an app store with over 5,000 apps, 1,000 of which are free, for its own OS (Palm devices with Windows Mobile has its own thing, of course). The variety of apps doesn’t look too shabby as Palm tries to keep up with the big boys and we’re hoping that the app store integration into the upcoming Nova OS will be seamless. Give us a killer device, an intuitive and attractive OS, top it off with the app store and tons of apps and you just might be a keeper, Palm. Don’t let us down!

Thanks Jimmie!

[Via GadgetsOnTheGo]

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