Palm OS isn't dead, it's just going Linux

ASIDE FROM a few Palm Treos, the Palm OS is dying as a credible alternative to Windows Mobile and Symbian. However, Cedric Mangaud, CEO with French software house, Abaxia, reckons it will be resurrected as a version of Linux.

Abaxia was, of course, founded by ex-Palm employees and Mangaud believes we will see the classic Palm GUI sitting on top of a Linux based smartphone by next year [2007].

According to IDC, Palm OS-based devices accounted for 31 per cent of the US market for converged devices in 2005 but only 4 per cent worldwide. What's really hurting it as a development environment is a lack of high speed data devices supporting the Palm OS on US networks such as Verizon.

Talking to ZDNet Australia, Creative Strategies analyst, Tim Bajarin, said, "The Palm OS was not optimised for video and multimedia. But it has a very strong following, and it's somewhat early to tell if Windows Mobile's support for multimedia is enough to entice traditional Palm users to jump ship."

Mangaud's comments are backed up by the fact that Palmsource is a founding member of the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum in 2005. This is an attempt to promote the development and deployment of applications and services on Linux phones through standardisation.

Linux based smartphones are particularly popular in Asia and in China especially. The LiPS Forum hopes that by creating industry standards more Linux based smartphones will be produced.

PalmSource itself was acquired by Japanese browser supplier, Access, back in 2005 but has yet to introduce a new version of the Palm OS.

Abaxia's interest in the Palm OS stems from its Mobile Portal offering. This is, in fact, software for customising the GUI of smartphones and already runs on handsets offered by France Telecom/Orange and Nokia.

A rival to the likes of Trigenix and Opera, Mangaud claims Mobile Portal will soon be offered for handsets employing a RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) as well as smartphones based on Symbian, Windows and Linux.

L'INQ
LiPS Forum