Talk of Palm's demise premature, claims exec

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A Palm representative has scotched suggestions that we have seen the last of new products bearing the Palm name after the company's recent acquisition by HP.

After months of speculation, at the end of April HP agreed a $1.2 billion buyout of Palm.

At the time, some reports suggested that we had seen the last of new devices arriving on the market bearing the Palm name, and that webOS wouldn't be updated any further.

But those rumours now appear to have been false, with a Palm representative this week promising not only new hardware devices displaying the Palm badge, but also a new version of the webOS operating system too.

Speaking at an AT&T developers seminar yesterday, the unnamed representative was quoted as saying Palm had a road map of releases in place, and promised the year ahead would be “very exciting”.

“I'm not allowed to talk about future roadmaps, especially because we're in the process of being acquired by HP, so I can't say,” the rep said, according to an early transcript of the event. “But yes, we have a road map. We are working on future devices. And a new version of the OS. So I think you're going to find the next year very exciting.”

Palm was a leading player in the PDA game at the turn of the century, but the emergence of smartphones in recent years all but killed off that market, and the once-mighty Palm saw its status as one of the leading manufacturers of mobile devices slip to near-obscurity. However, it stunned showgoers at CES in Las Vegas at the start of 2009 with its own debut smartphone, the Palm Pre – spoken of at the time as a potential “iPhone-beater”.

But after delays getting the device to market were followed by poor sales of not only the Pre, but the follow-up Pixi smartphone and then their “Plus” successors, the writing was very much on the wall and the decision was taken to sell.

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