According to The Guardian, Palm and O2 UK are set to announce next week that the latter will be the exclusive UK partner for the upcoming GSM version of the Palm Pre. Back in late March, The Guardian had already reported that such a deal had been reached. Further back in mid-March, there had been rumours that Telefonica, O2’s parent company, had struck a deal with Palm for Spain, the UK, and Latin America.
Earlier rumours had pegged a release at the latter part of the year. Specific details have yet to be revealed but hopefully next week’s announcement will shed some light on this matter.
O2 UK already has the Apple iPhone exclusive. It will be interesting to see how the two devices fare against each other.
Update: Palm has scheduled a press event in the UK for July 7th. Palm did not confirm that this is a Pre announcement but I would not bet against it myself.