Palm's New Smartphone Platform DOA? (PALM)

Dan Frommer | November 24, 2008 3:00 PM

Smartphone maker Palm's (PALM) future is mostly hinging on one thing: That it'll find a large audience for a new, top-secret mobile platform, led by former Apple (AAPL) executive Jon Rubinstein.

Palm tells Reuters that the OS is still on track to be released this year, with the first device for sale in the first half of 2009.

Too late? In a gloomy note about Palm, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez brings up a good point:

“Palm has the right strategy,” he writes in a damning note about Palm, as quoted by Barron's. “Unfortunately, we believe the company is about two years too late, and Nova is likely irrelevant against Apple’s mobile OS X, Android, [Nokia's Symbian] S60 and Mobile Windows. Is there room for yet another mobile OS? Will developers take resources away from Apple or Android to work on Nova? We do not believe so.”

Of course, if it's awesome, it should attract a following. There's still plenty of growth left in the smartphone market.

But one more factor working against Palm: No built-in market. Unlike Apple's iPhone app platform, which already worked on millions of existing iPhones when it launched in July, Palm's new platform probably won't work on old phones.

5 Comments

Jgbr said:

Nov. 24, 3:11 PM

Is not it based on Symbian OS?

Dan Frommer (URL) said:

Nov. 24, 4:03 PM

Have never heard that before.

EPS said:

Nov. 24, 4:37 PM

I heard it was supposed to be Linux-based, possibly with a compatibility layer for Palm OS apps? (Though it gets confusing, because ACCESS, who bought PalmSource, also created a successor to Palm OS- I know theirs was definitely based off of Linux, and also that they seem to have failed to get anyone to use it)

Since this is a successor to the Palm OS, maybe they'll allow people using the Palm OS Centro to upgrade their devices? There are enough Centros out there that it could be significant- though I don't know, it depends on the technical details.

omar (URL) said:

Nov. 29, 5:29 PM

thanks

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Palm's New Smartphone Platform DOA? (PALM)

Dan Frommer | November 24, 2008 3:00 PM

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