Thursday, December 7, 2006
PalmOS 5 Gets New Lease On Life?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 09:00 AM
http://investors.palm.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=221399
PalmOS 5 was supposed to be a transition OS between PalmOS 4, which was based on the dragonball processor and a new multitasking OS that would benefit from the more powerful ARM processors, but that new OS, which was called Cobalt, or PalmOS 6, never saw the light of day as far as any vendors go. Then, through various corporate reorganization, sales and purchases, the license for PalmOS went with PalmSource to a Japanese company called ACCESS, which is working on a new Linux based platform. Now, it appears that Palm, Inc. is getting a perpetual license from ACCESS to do what it wants with OS5.
"Palm, Inc. today announced it has signed an agreement with ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource, Inc.) to license the source code for Palm OS Garnet, the version of the Palm OS used in several Treo(TM) smartphone models and all Palm(R) handheld computers. Under the agreement, Palm has a perpetual license to use as well as to innovate on the Palm OS Garnet code base. Palm will retain ownership rights in its innovations. The new agreement also provides Palm flexibility to use Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any Palm product, and together with any other system technologies. The company plans to ensure that applications now compatible with Palm OS Garnet will operate with little or no modification in future Palm products that employ Palm OS Garnet as the company evolves it over time to support Palm's product differentiation strategy."
I don't see this as a big deal really. Palm OS5 is 5-6 years old and is really little competition for the latest from Microsoft or Nokia. Perhaps Palm, Inc. can really do something with it, but will they be able to do it quickly enough, and what will happen when ACCESS ships its new platform?
PalmOS 5 was supposed to be a transition OS between PalmOS 4, which was based on the dragonball processor and a new multitasking OS that would benefit from the more powerful ARM processors, but that new OS, which was called Cobalt, or PalmOS 6, never saw the light of day as far as any vendors go. Then, through various corporate reorganization, sales and purchases, the license for PalmOS went with PalmSource to a Japanese company called ACCESS, which is working on a new Linux based platform. Now, it appears that Palm, Inc. is getting a perpetual license from ACCESS to do what it wants with OS5.
"Palm, Inc. today announced it has signed an agreement with ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource, Inc.) to license the source code for Palm OS Garnet, the version of the Palm OS used in several Treo(TM) smartphone models and all Palm(R) handheld computers. Under the agreement, Palm has a perpetual license to use as well as to innovate on the Palm OS Garnet code base. Palm will retain ownership rights in its innovations. The new agreement also provides Palm flexibility to use Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any Palm product, and together with any other system technologies. The company plans to ensure that applications now compatible with Palm OS Garnet will operate with little or no modification in future Palm products that employ Palm OS Garnet as the company evolves it over time to support Palm's product differentiation strategy."
I don't see this as a big deal really. Palm OS5 is 5-6 years old and is really little competition for the latest from Microsoft or Nokia. Perhaps Palm, Inc. can really do something with it, but will they be able to do it quickly enough, and what will happen when ACCESS ships its new platform?
