This is the third price drop Verizon Wireless has offered on the smartphones.

In late February it lowered the price of the Palm Pixi Plus by 20% to $80. Then this past March it lowered prices again, this time on the Palm Pre Plus as well.

The only feature that may make people want to choose either over Android OS phones or the iPhone is the fact that purchasing a Palm Pre Plus or Pixi Plusphone gives you free access to the mobile hotspot feature, which normally would cost $40 on top of regular monthly phone bill.

The mobile hotspot feature is basically turns your phone into a free wireless modem that can generate a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and connect up to five other devices to the Internet. It has a limit of 5GB p/mo, but that’s more than enough for casual web browsing.

Over the past year, the original Pre and Pixi phones have seen only moderate success at Sprint Nextel, and Palm has tumbled down the food chain of priority devices, especially since Android OS phones have joined the fray. Verizon Wireless began selling the phones in January.

Prospective customers can now benefit from on line discounts and the mail in rebate has been dropped. So now the handsets are available for purchase for as little as $149.99 and $79.99.

A Verizon spokesperson commented recently in an article on Wireless week and said that they had a “brief period where they tested mail in rebates on some phones.”

The test led Verizon to conclude that “some customers expected instant rebates,” and that as this is a competitive business they have “responded accordingly.”

Most would say that the new offers that are in place on the Palm Pre Plus and also the Palm Pixi Plus is an attempt from Verizon to increase sales of both of the devices.

In an increasingly crowded marketplace with Apple’s iPhone and Google Android OS-based phones racking up customers, trying to make the price of not so popular phones as these more price competitive only makes sense.