Smartphone Thoughts: Palm Pushes Next Generation Devices To Mid-2009

Palm claimed it was going to finalize the new operating system, codenamed Nova, by late 2008 and release devices in early 2009. That has changed.

"In a conference call with industry analysts yesterday, Palm's CEO promised that devices running its next operating system would be on the market by the middle of next year. On the surface this might seem like good news, but for many months this company has been committing to having smartphones running Palm OS II out in early 2009. The fact that it has switched its language is a sign that the release of this operating system has almost certainly slipped a bit."



I have to wonder if Palm has done a better job of lining up hardware makers for this OS than they did with Palm OS 6, also known as Cobalt. Nearly 5 years after its release, not a single device has been offered for sale, even though they were expecting devices within months of the 6.0 release. Of course, 6.1 came and went with no devices either, not even from Palm. We'll see if they perform better this time around, and we'll see if anyone cares amidst the releases of the iPhone, Android and hopefully, Microsoft's own Windows Mobile 7.