MobileSummit & DevCon 2005: Day 1 Morning Start
This morning (Pacific time) saw the opening of the PalmSource Mobile Summit & DevCon 2005 which started with keynotes from both David Nagel, the company’s departing CEO, and also Ed Colligan, palmOne’s newly appointed CEO.
David briefly talked about the continued growth of the PalmOS and its developer community particularly in the smartphone space thanks not only to the success of our Treo but also pointed to past examples such as the Kyocera PalmOS phone which was released a few years ago and which unbeknownst to many actually sold 500,000 units – more than the sum of all Windows Mobile phones with a single competing device.
Additionally, he referred to another important item of news regarding palmOne’s acquisition of the ‘Palm’ name in a $30 million transaction announced today. He described how after some discussion it became obvious that the two Palms had contributed to some market confusion and that the term ‘Palm’ would always be more closely associated to the hardware than the software. It was thus in his view fairly natural and logical that the brand should now fully revert back to palmOne. On this note he handed the podium to Ed Colligan.
Considering that Ed was one of the earliest original Palm employees, he described how gratifying it was to now be able to fully return to his roots. In effect, palmOne will soon again be rebranded to simply Palm – a brand which undoubtedly still carries an enormous amount of clout and market value and that raised the passion of many people in the audience who have been involved with the Palm economy since its inception and who still feel a particularly strong bond with it.
It was a very special moment to share and one which helped to remind everyone of the incredible journey that the Palm story has been to date and is without a doubt going to continue to play in the future. In this respect, Ed reiterated the huge opportunities that exist for both palmOne and PalmSource going forward.
[Please note: I will be blogging throughout the conference whenever I can find the time to sit down but you can expect to get at least a couple of updates throughout the day until Thursday when the conference closes.]
palmOne acquires rights to Palm brand [palmOne Press Release]
Treonauts always seek new opportunities… 
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Comments
Well finally some sense in the branding department. Who was the genius who came up with PalmOne for godsake. Everybody in the world knows a palm as a Palm. The public aren't even aware of PalmOne or Palmsource. It was never going to work.
So is this the end of Palmsource and the Palm os. According to the press release the brand attributes are: "Innovation, power, ease of use, and elegance". Nothing here that would necessarily preclude Windows Mobile on a palm device (except perhaps the elegance bit).
Could Palmsource actually become an OS developer for more than just Palm or handheld devices? That is, reading between the lines of several news items and posts of late Palmsource "could" be consindering a palm zenlike Gui on a Linux core (ala Mac OSX on Unix core). Could we see emerging a laptop ot tablet or pc os based on Palm principals?
Lets hope Palm can get there act together. Personally I'd love a full blown laptop with instant on Palm features.
Shawn - yes, all pictures taken with my Treo 650 at the conference since I forgot my camera (and often times also my mind) at home...
Thanks David - very interesting thoughts!
Felipe - all that I can say is that it doesn't appear ready yet + read Ed's comments in my other post.
Cheers, A.
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