Brazil's secret Palm OS developer

THE LAUNCH of Palm's latest mobile offering - the Palm Pre - appears to have been ignored by many key industry players. But not Brazil's very own mobile software specialist, Handcase, it seems.

This company already has some 177 mobile applications which appear to run on any flavour of Palm you'd care to name. Its total catalogue appears to be 320 applications.

The snag, as Handcase admits, is migrating the products from Portuguese into English. Nevertheless, there are already over 70 Handcase Palm apps available in English and by Q1 2010 there should be at least 100 in English in total.

Handcase takes the Palm product range very seriously, indeed. It targets six particular segments - personal; medical: entertainment; professional; corporate; and utilities.

Handcase was, however, quite coy about what's really going on in the coming months. It says that initially it will launch three apps for all six segments. Each month it will add others to reach the fabelled figure of 100.

Luckily, for Handcase there is a way out of all this confusion. The company says that it will shortly create a website exclusively for the Palm Pre to showcase its products.

The central theme of Handcase's software appears to be sharing data with those around you.

As Ricardo Garay, Handcase's CEO says, "Imagine our applications enabling doctors to share information with their patients, or colleagues in hospitals. Or, in cases where there is research being one - with research centres, too."

Palm fans can check out the existing Handcase web site here in English. µ