Palm’s Centro smartphone will begin selling on Verizon Wireless’s US network from today as the handset vendor aims to keep pace with Apple’s 3G iPhone, which launches in the US next month. The Centro device, already available from rival US mobile operators Sprint Nextel and AT&T, increased its market share at the expense of the iPhone in the first-quarter of the year, according to recent figures from IDC. However, with the new lower-priced iPhone to sell for as little as US$199 – half the price it did previously – Palm’s current 13.4 percent share of the US smartphone market is expected to be under threat. Verizon will offer the Centro for US$99 on a contract.

Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing at Palm, told Reuters that the company had shipped 1 million units of the flagship device by end-March and was “confident” that the Verizon deal would see the vendor double this figure by year-end. For Verizon Wireless, the deal is seen as a strategy to compete with rival AT&T, which will be the exclusive distributor of the new iPhone in the US.