Palm, Inc., manufacturer of the Palm smartphone Centro, announced that it has sold its one-millionth unit of its Palm Centro mobile phone.  This is impressive, since the Centro was only launched last September, and shows the appeal it has to customers who want a smartphone at the price of a plain mobile phone. Palm has made an impressive rebound after the popularity of its Palm Pilot Series of PDAs began to wane when the mobile phone became mainstream.

The Centro is well priced at US$99.00, less than one-fourth the price of the iPhone. The Centro has a PDA function as well as the normal data and texting functions and has sold well to young adults and women who are looking for a more full-featured phone but do not want to pay a lot for it. The Centro is offered in the U.S. by carriers AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corporation. It is also sold in ten countries worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the U.K., Germany, Spain, Ireland, France and Italy, and is set to grow in additional worldwide locations.

According to Brodie Keast, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Palm, "The Palm Centro is flying off the shelves because users who want to step up to a smartphone see it as the perfect first choice. It has everything a person needs to stay organized and connected with everyone who is important to them. We're very excited about the Centro's near-instant popularity in the U.S. and think it's going to be a huge hit as it continues to make its way across the globe."

IDC agreed with the assessment of the Centro. "Smartphones are certainly not new to business professionals; however, now more than ever we are seeing consumers migrate toward these types of devices as form factors have become more appealing and price points are now competing with traditional mobile phones," said Ryan Reith, Senior Research Analyst with IDC. "Palm's Centro plays right into the hands of the consumer looking for a more robust experience on their mobile phone. We definitely expect to see this trend continue worldwide."

Palm indicated that smartphones represented about 11 percent of all mobile phone sales in 2007, with those sales expected to grow to as much as 35 percent by calendar year 2011. The Palm Centro has a full QWERTY keyboard and color touch screen, which makes it convenient for texting messages, checking emails, IMing and Web browsing. On top of this, it also has Palm’s great PDA functionality for keeping track of calendar appointments and a detailed and integrated contacts management list.

Read the Palm Centro press release here.