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I really wish that SOMEONE would release a well thought out PDA running Cobalt. But it doesn't look like it will happen. And Palm still won't release any decent PDAs... The Treos rock, but thats about it.

Who need the copyrighted licenced Be's code when you have Haiku ?

I think the standalone PDA is coming to its end, but if you look at some of the releases HTC are coming out with the smartphone and pda-phone are going to be going strong for a long while.

Absolutely.

Moto, HTC, Palm, Sharp, Nokia, et cetera, all have new smartphones headed to market and no letup in sight.

It's really unfortunate that PDA's are coming to an end. I have yet to see a so-called 'smart' phone that can meet my needs. Smashing the PDA and phone together has moved things backwards. I need the smallest possible phone for the convenience factor, not a massive thing that tries to do everything (but nothing well) that I have to lug around.

Edited 2007-01-26 17:39

All of Palm's current products run garnet, (PalmOS 5,) as modified by Palm.

Garnet is technology near the end of its life.

Palm has not said what they intend to do with the technology they licensed, although industry speculation is that they're going to do a Linux based PalmOS of their own.

Seriously, why would they throw away the Palm brand, and replace it with something less recognisable, which also could cause confusion with other products?

Ego. IANABP (I am not a business person) nor do I play one on TV, so I never understand this reasoning either. When buying a company, a large portion of the money goes into "goodwill" and "brand recognition". Why some companies as a first step decide to blow millions on rebranding (think of all the marketing materials, letterheads, web presence, etc.) to replace the original (paid-for!) name with their own, often less known, can only be explained by ego.

Does anyone have any statistics as to growth, market value, brand recognition etc. before and after such a renaming action?

IAANABP, but I'd say that in cases where two well-known (and equally well-liked) brands are merged, it often makes sense to get rid of one of those brands, because it allows for a "halo effect" that disperses equally on all of your products. However, in all cases where one brand is better-known (and/or better-liked) you're absolutely right that it makes no sense to get rid of that brand name.

I suspect this is Access's way of saying "screw you" to Palm for not throwing their support behind Access's upcoming platform.

Didn't Palm buy back all the rights to the Palm name? Maybe they're not allowed to call it PalmOS anymore.

Exactly correct.

PalmSource, before being bought by Access, sold the rights to the "Palm" name to PalmOne, which then changed its name back to Palm.

The deal gave PalmSource 4 years to replace "Palm" in its name and the name of all of its products.

The messing with the well known brand names can be bad like the Borland / Inprise madness of melons.

I agree. Palm is a well recognized name already. Now they are starting from scratch. How well known can a handheld OS be with a non-tech consumer?

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