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No, the Palm Pre can do the conversion from gallons to decaliters just fine, it is the conversion from CDMA to GSM that seems to be giving the company fits.  Back at CES, I was given a private word that the two devices would ship simultaneously and take the world by storm.  But according to this announcement (“in time for the holidays”) by Palm, the two are not even close.  My math says Palm will release the Pre by December 11th.

Why December 11?  Easy.  Following the roadmap and marketing effort Palm laid out in the states, the company seeks to feed on iPhone customers whose contract is up.  The iPhone 3G, the real player in the UK where everything is 3G, launch day contracts are up on December 11th, 18 months after the original launch day of July 11.  Palm will plead its case to UK mobilists (just coined a new word and I am off to go hashtag it on Twitter) who might be looking for something a little different.

Why launch in two stages?  Simple: Apple did.  Palm’s sales plan is to track Apple at the end of contract terms for each market.  Why waste your time yelling about something folks are not interested in buying?  Palm seems to reason the Pre’s isn’t impressive enough to stage an outright coup to get users to pay up their early termination fees plus new hardware costs, or it just lives in the real world and wants to maximize its payoff potential.

Interestingly, Palm’s statement of “before Christmas” is dangerously close to the end of the supposed 6 month exclusivity Sprint has on the device.  That has me wondering if that has any bearing at all in delivering a GSM phone.  Perhaps a bulk run in Asia and two boats sail: one for Europe the other for AT&T in the US?  Wishful thinking, I am sure.  What do you think?  Will this intro spur the US bound GSM version or are we left to wait it out?