Smartphone-maker Palm yesterday launched a new high-end phone on the European market, the development of which was led by the US company's Irish operation.

The Palm Treo 500v is the first smartphone the company has developed exclusively for the European market and it will be available exclusively from Vodafone in Ireland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Britain from October 1st.

John Hartnett, Palm's senior vice-president for global markets,said that the Treo 500v was the first Palm product to have been brought to market by the Irish organisation.

Palm established a European engineering centre at Swords, Co Dublin, in the summer of 2005 to concentrate on developing phones for European markets. It currently employs 35 people there.

The Treo 500v marks a major push into the consumer market for Palm, which was the dominant maker of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the 1990s but has struggled as more advanced mobile phones have taken on those features.

The phone runs Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 operating system and Mr Hartnett says that it has a brand new user interface, which was developed in conjunction with Vodafone and Microsoft.

The Treo 500v will provide high-speed access to the Internet using 3G technology. Available in white or grey, it has a full Qwerty keyboard, a 2.0 megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and 150MB of memory, which can be expanded by using Micro SD cards.

It also has mobile versions of the Microsoft Office family of applications.

Mr Hartnett described it as a "multi-messaging phone" which provides instant messaging, SMS, e-mail and MMS capabilities.

It will compete with Nokia's high-end N95 and Apple's iPhone when it is launched here next year.

Vodafone Ireland confirmed that the phone will be available in Ireland on October 1st and will cost up to €299 depending on the customer's contract.