Palm Pixie Launch Fate Depends On Pre Sales

Digging through the leaked webOS ROM has confirmed that the Palm "Pixie" is in development, but that doesn't mean that the device – believed to be the Palm Eos - will actually launch any time soon.  According to TechCrunch's sources in Asia, Palm are waiting to see how Pre sales continue before green-lighting the Eos project.After the cut, how the Pre's "complicated mechanical design" impacted availability

"Palm has decided to put the Pixie on hold until they have better visibility into how its current models are selling in the market" Unnamed source

That's enough for TechCrunch to predict that the Pixie/Eos may not in fact reach the market in 2009, if at all.  They've also heard "from multiple sources" that Palm's hardware supplier, Foxconn, were able to deliver just 30-percent of the Pre handsets they originally ordered: 500,000 devices were expected by the end of May, but Foxconn managed only 150,000 with delivery in June.

According to the sources, the reason for the shortfall was "the [Pre's] complicated mechanical design", presumably a combination of the slider form-factor, compact build and capacitive technology.  Whether Palm can find enough handsets to give them the sales they require to push through the Pixie/Eos remains to be seen; there's also, of course, the not-so-small matter of the GSM version, which is expected to be launched in Europe in the second-half of 2009.