Early this morning Palm announced plans to work with carrier-giant Vodafone to bring a new Treo to Europe. Not just any old Treo, mind you, but one built on Windows Mobile with support for GSM networks' 3G/UTMS technology and Microsoft-based push e-mail. This news comes only a week after Palm revealed it had to stop shipping its only smartphone available in Europe, the Treo 650, because of the RoHS pollution law.

The new Treo will hit multiple European countries, including the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Netherlands by the end of the year, before expanding to other regions, it seems. Palm Senior VP John Hartnett said, "Partnering with Vodafone, a world-class mobile operator, is a significant step to accelerate our geographic expansion and serve more European customers."

This appears to be a important change in strategy for Palm, which has traditionally emphasized the American market first for its Treo products. The latest Treos shipped in the U.S., with CDMA/EV-DO carriers Verizon and Sprint, for example, only.

But Cingular (a GSM carrier) subscribers have not had a new Treo smartphone for some time now. Today’s announcement indicates they may have to wait even longer.

Palm and Vodafone emphasize business users, not consumers, with their joint agreement. They cite a Radicati Group report that says only an estimated 2 percent of business e-mail inboxes worldwide are accessed via mobile. And Vodafone global director of Business Marketing Nick Jeffery said, “Vodafone's business customers expect us to help them increase productivity and make the most of their business and personal time. The new Treo smartphone will be a market-leading device, which combined with our high-speed 3G/UMTS network and real-time push email, will make this an invaluable business tool."

No more specifics for the device, other than that it will run Windows Mobile 5.0 - it has to to support Microsoft's Messaging and Security Feature Pack - were given.

So perhaps today's announcement was a bit of damage control on the part of Palm and its partners to dampen the effect of rampant rumors of a new GSM/UMTS Treo coming to the U.S. and Europe this fall. Whatever its intention, Palm shares were up on earlier morning trading by 3.9 percent.

Rumors
Palm committed to releasing several new smartphones this year, with - possibly - a couple more still due before the end of 2006. Recent rumors indicate two of them could be aimed at Europe as well as GSM carriers like Cingular in the U.S.

One of these new smartphones is presumably codenamed Nitro and the other Lennon. Both models supposedly lack an antenna, which would be Palm's biggest deviation from Treo design since the unveiling of the Treo 600.

Reportedly Lennon delivers the 3G goods with UMTS technology. It is also a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone (in the mode of today's announcement), like the Treo 700w (offered by Verizon for its CDMA/EV-DO network), and may ship with software client support Microsoft Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Exchange, which delivers push e-mail to the device.

All that appears to be known about Nitro is that it may run the Palm OS and it sports a 1.3 megapixel camera. It may be a less expensive device as well.