While the Palm Pre is garnering most of the attention right now, it appears that Palm is planning at least two smartphones for this year as well. But these new models may take longer to be released if a Chinese-language Commercial Times report is correct. The report indicates that Compal, the OEM for these devices, has found that the Qualcomm chipset that was to have been used in the devices suffers from poor performance. It will now wait for a newer (and hopefully faster) chipset to be released.
It’s unlikely that the Palm Pre is one of the devices affected by this delay. Not only does it use a TI chipset rather than a Qualcomm one but it is also reportedly being built by Chi Mei Communication Systems.
Nothing is known about these two new smartphones. It could be that they are Windows Mobile devices meant for the Treo line but they could be unknown webOS devices given that Palm just promised such devices.