Palm has sealed a partnership with Vodafone to push a new model of its Treo smartphone on the European market.

The forthcoming device will operate on Vodafone's high speed 3G mobile network and will be the first Treo running Windows Mobile on the European market.

Palm started shipping its Windows powered Treo 700w in the US last year, but did not introduce it in other regions.

The phone should be available in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands by the end of this year.

Palm pulled the Treo 650 from Europe earlier this month because it failed to comply with new environmental regulations that limit the use of toxic materials in electronic devices.

Despite the wide availability of competing models from Research in Motion and HP in Europe, Palm claimed that mobile email is still largely a greenfield market.