While announcing its new deal with Verizon Wireless regarding Palm Centro, the company has also revealed its target for their affordable smartphone.

According to Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing, Palm hoped that until the end of the year will reach the 2 million Palm Centros milestone.

And it won’t probably too hard, because in March the company has announced that its Palm Centro has already sold one million units.

For its first four months of availability, Palm Centro was a sprint exclusive, but earlier this year the company has reached an agreement with AT&T. Now, Palm Centro is available also to the Verizon Wireless subscribers for $99.

Palm Centro is considered as a smaller, more compact version of the company’s biggest success, Palm Treo.

Besides the U.S., Palm is now shipping Centro in 10 countries worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, France, Mexico, Colombia and Italy.

However, according to a research released by IDC, Palm Centro was the one which helped the company to almost double its US market share in this year’s first quarter. IDC concluded that in the first quarter Palm had 13.4 percent of the market, which is almost double compared to 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. However, Palm has gained only the third spot, behind RIM and Apple.

According to Palm, Centro has reached more young adults and women, as well as a broader range of household income, than any prior Palm smartphone.

When compared to other Palm smartphones, Centro is reaching almost double the number of women, more than double the number of customers under age 35, and nearly three times as many customers with a household income of less than $75,000. The company is promoting its Centro as the ideal device for first-time smartphone users.

Palm has already announced its intention to release an entirely new Palm OS Linux Platform in 2009, which represents an evolutionary step in the Treo product line.