Excuse the pun, but the code-name of the long-awaited next-generation Palm OS lends itself very well to the smartphone pioneer’s current predicament.
Palm - best known for its popular Treo and Centro smartphones - plans to unveil at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) some ‘Palm New-ness’ that we’ve apparently been waiting for.
Though the company refuses to be drawn on the nature of this ‘new-ness’, I’m taking this to mean that Nova, the long-awaited reincarnation of the operating system (OS) underpinning Palm’s mobile devices, will finally see the light of day, some years after the vendor first said it was looking to reduce its dependence on Windows Mobile and Garnet (the original Palm OS).
Like other analysts, though, I do wonder whether this will be enough to save Palm from destruction.
Firstly, the company’s devices - which once were considered the acme of all things smartphone - fell from favour long ago and upstarts such as the BlackBerry (in all of its forms), the iPhone and the G1 have supplanted its position in the hearts and minds of millions of multimedia wireless device users, particularly in its ‘home’ market of the US.
Secondly, Palm has announced preliminary results for the most recent financial quarter that will likely be substantially down on results for the previous year, due to reduced demand for its maturing smartphone products, as well as the difficult economic environment, which had ‘greatly intensified the negative impact on product sales’.
Also, that Palm feels it can finally go to market with the new offering several months ahead of schedule may be an indication of the pressure it is under to improve its performance; it is to be hoped that the OS isn’t about to be unleashed prematurely, as this would reflect badly on the already weakened Palm. Further, devices using the Nova OS won’t be commercially available before mid-2009. That said, if the platform turns out to be an open source model, Palm could benefit from apps developers coming up with lots of new solutions in time for the first handsets to go on sale.
But, with many developers already forsaking Windows Mobile (and its costly licensing regime) etc in favour of the more financially rewarding Apple environment, Palm might find itself talking to a comparatively small audience before it really does go Nova.
Tags: Apple, Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, Centro, CES, Consumer Electronics Show, G1, iPhone 3G, Microsoft, mobile applications, mobile devices, mobile operating systems, mobile OS, mobile services, Nova, Palm, Research In Motion, smartphones, Treo, Windows Mobile