New at CES, Palm Pre - iPhone killer?

With CES 2009 winding down this weekend, one product stood out in the smartphone category. The new Palm Pre smartphone from Palm.


And now for something completely different...

::Arrow shoots into Concorde::
LANCELOT:  Brave, brave Concorde!  You shall not have died in vain!
CONCORDE:  Uh, I'm-I'm not quite dead, sir.
LANCELOT:  Well, you shall not have been mortally wounded in vain!
CONCORDE:  Uh, I-I think uh, I could pull through, sir.
LANCELOT:  Oh, I see.
CONCORDE:  Actually, I think I'm all right to come with you--
LANCELOT:  No, no, sweet Concorde!  Stay here!  I will send help as
  soon as I have accomplished a daring and heroic rescue in my own
  particular... (sigh)
CONCORDE:  Idiom, sir?
LANCELOT:  Idiom!
CONCORDE:  No, I feel fine, actually, sir.
LANCELOT:  Farewell, sweet Concorde!
CONCORDE:  I'll-uh, I'll just stay here, then, shall I, sir?  Yeah.
(from Monty Phython and the Holy Grail)

Pardon the interruption, but this is how I see Palm (the company, Palm = Concorde) these past few years. Lemme 'splain...

Palm was riding along the smartphone highway happy go lucky, and all of a sudden - an arrow (Blackberry, and iPhone)! Palm insists that they can go on, but they know that they are dying. The bad thing is, that everyone else (Lancelot = the smartphone community) thinks that they are dying too, so poor, sweet Palm is left behind in the swamp.
The question is: Will Palm pull the arrow out of its chest with the Palm Pre and move ahead to take the victory at Swamp Castle with Lancelot? (sorry, my analogies are a little strange...)

Some stats on the Palm Pre:

• slide down full keyboard
• 3 MP camera
• USB 2.0, GPS, Wi-Fi & EV-DO, Bluetooth 2.1 with stereo support
• 8GB of storage, and 3.5mm headphone jack
• all in one calendar view (syncs Outlook and Facebook)
• 3.1-inch, 320×480-pixel touchscreen
• Cut and Paste functionality (try that on an iPhone!)
• wireless charger (First of its kind!)
  
• should start around $200 later this year

This weekend the Pre was awarded the coveted Best of CES 2009 at CES in Las Vegas. No sooner was this announced than Palm's stock shot up over 38%! So, its definitely got some buzz going on right now in the mobile world.

One good thing to come from this news is maybe this new competition will bring the price down on that BlackBerry Storm I'm wanting to buy this year!