"What the [Dublin] team has done is all the quality assurance and testing, getting the product ready for market, " said John Hartnett, senior vice president of Palm's global markets division.

The Treo 750 is seen within Palm as a standard-bearer for its push into a European mobile phone market which the company is anxious to crack. "Bringing products to market from Silicon Valley has always been a challenge for US companies, " said Hartnett. Having an R&D facility in Europe is part of a stated policy of moving the "centre of gravity" away from California and closer to key markets.

Palm estimates the total value of smart phone sales will hit 34bn over the next five years. "Forty per cent of that is going to be in Europe and obviously Ireland is going to be a major part of that, " Hartnett said. The Limerickborn Palm executive said the 5m plant in Dublin has already begun paying dividends for the mobile device maker. "The centre has pleasantly surprised and exceeded our expectations, and I'm saying that as an executive sitting in Silicon Valley not as an Irishman, insofar as the talent we've been able to attract has been incredible, " he said.

The 30-strong team includes Irish, British, German and Russian engineers.

"We are in the process of filing a number of patents out of Ireland already. In the first year, this is a measurement of success. I can't go into those technologies. I'd love to and I will when they become available, " he said.

Palm is best-known on this side of the Atlantic for its handheld computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) but in the US it has been making inroads into the market for smart phones, mobile phones which include email, web-browsing and other functions and are aimed primarily at business people.

In a market dominated by Canadian company Research In Motion's Blackberry devices, Palm doubled its share to 20% over the past year, pushing the company's sales up 34% to 1bn in the process.

That rapid growth, however, has begun to stall. Palm has struggled to live up to high expectations this year, missing sales forecasts over the last quarter as new products from RIM, Motorola and Nokia made their presence felt and prevented Palm's Treo from continuing its rapid ascent. To regain the momentum, the company is now looking to Europe, where the Treo brand is virtually unknown, as the new catalyst for growth in its smart phone division. "This is the first time in the history of our company that we will deliver a product first to Europe and then the US, " said Hartnett of the Treo 750.

Palm will spend "tens of millions" on the most extensive marketing campaign in its history to drive sales of the 400 phone in the nine European countries, including Ireland, the UK and Germany, where it will be distributed in partnership with Vodafone.