PalmSource Broadens Product Portfolio

Posted By: Ryan Monday, February 14, 2005 11:25:37 AM

PalmSource today announced it has expanded its product portfolio with the addition of four new software products for mobile phones. With the recent acquisition of China MobileSoft (CMS), PalmSource's product line now includes software for smartphones, feature phones and mobile devices at all price points.

PalmSource acquired CMS as part of its strategy to further extend the Company's leadership as a software provider for phones and mobile devices worldwide. The combination of Palm OS and the new software products enables PalmSource to provide one of the broadest lines of mobile software in the industry, powering mobile phones at all price points in all regions of the world.

CMS provides mobile device manufacturers and ODMs complete, integrated software platforms and user-friendly applications. With the acquisition of CMS, PalmSource now has 10 licensees shipping CMS software on over 30 phone models in China. In the future, PalmSource plans to give the phone applications and phone software the Palm OS look-and-feel and data compatibility, extending the industry-leading Palm OS ease-of-use to all classes of mobile phones worldwide.

"Our strategy is to provide customers a full spectrum of operating system software and applications for phones and mobile devices," said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource, Inc. "In addition to Palm OS® Garnet and Palm OS® Cobalt, we are now providing customers with operating system software for both smartphones and feature phones. We're also offering three new versions of one of the most popular applications for phones-MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), an email client and a micro browser."

Available now, the new product offerings from PalmSource are:

PalmSource mFone for Smart Phones
A complete Smart Phone platform that includes everything from the GUI, to device drivers, network protocols, development tools, and end-user applications such as a browser, PIM functions, email, SMS, MMS, MP3 players, games. mFone for Smart Phones is designed to run on Linux operating system distributions.

PalmSource Feature Phone
A Man Machine Interface (MMI) for Feature Phones that includes a GUI engine and applications such as phone dialer, SMS, MMS, Address Book, PIM, and WAP browser, essentially all that is needed for a Feature Phone user interface. mFone for Feature Phones is designed to run on any Real Time Operating System (RTOS) such as Nucleus and VRTX.

PalmSource mMMS
An enhanced short message service for mobile phones that enables transmission of graphics, video clips, and sound files. This version developed by PalmSource is a full-featured MMS client for Smart Phones, Feature Phones, and other wireless devices. It is designed to enable users to easily and efficiently receive, send, browse, create, and edit multimedia messages on handheld terminals. It complies with the OMA 2.0 MMS standard and can be ported to most Smart Phone, Feature Phone or wireless device.

PalmSource mBrowser
A multi-mode micro browser optimized for Smart Phones, Feature Phones, and other wireless devices. The browser is designed to be compact, fast, and supports both WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and HTML. By supporting multiple standards, this WAP browser from PalmSource is significantly more useful than many micro browsers because it can access all Internet content, not just WAP enabled sites.

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just_little_me @ 2/14/2005 6:34:29 PM #

Wake me when someone releases hardware to run Cobalt...

zzz...

JLM.

RE:

MikeInDM @ 2/15/2005 9:18:16 AM #

Dude, wake up. The hardware has been around for some time.

RE:

LiveFaith @ 2/15/2005 10:47:49 AM #

Looks like they got these products to the market pretty quick after snatching up that Chinese company. I'm impressed.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE:

voice of chaos @ 2/15/2005 4:09:22 PM #

1) These products were already in the market - the Chinese market, with both Chinese and English support. Bringing them out in the US /other markets wasn't a lot of work.

2) This is the interesting "other shoe" dropping from PalmSource. They now have two incompatible OS products (3 if you include Cobalt, which I'm not as there are no products with it yet). As they have committed to integration it will be interesting to see how they carry it out.

Ugh! Does any of this stuff run on Palm OS?

pmjoe @ 2/16/2005 8:20:28 AM #

This article probably won't get much notice, but it doesn't look like any of this stuff runs under Palm OS.

This, IMHO, is not a good sign for us Palm OS fans. Why is PalmSource wasting their time with this stuff?

RE: Ugh! Does any of this stuff run on Palm OS?

mikecane @ 2/16/2005 8:38:07 AM #

>>>>Why is PalmSource wasting their time with this stuff?

$$$$$

More B.S. for Wall Street

Gekko @ 2/16/2005 8:50:53 AM #

This is merely another attempt by Nagel et al to throw some more shiit against the wall so they can have one more B.S. story to tell Wall Street analysts and try to get/keep the stock price up so they can continue to milk everything to the last drop off the teat.

They have nothing real going on so the Investor Relations Dept. directed by Nagel comes up with these BS Press Releases so they can continue to tell some kind of story rather than everyone see they are STAGNANT. I repeat STAGNANT. Nobody wants Cobalt, nobody will want PalmLinux, and nobody wants any of this crap. It's all SMOKE AND MIRRORS.

Nagel's Motto: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BULLSHIIT!!!"

RE: More B.S. for Wall Street

mikecane @ 2/16/2005 9:20:32 AM #

So where does that leave YOU? When that T3 breaks, what then? You realize that every forthcoming p1 device is not only going to have that T5 "RAM" arrangement, but that garish OKey interface too!

RE: More B.S. for Wall Street

Gekko @ 2/16/2005 9:29:40 AM #

Where does that leave me? If my T3 breaks, I will try to find a new one somewhere - retail, P1, or a used one - ebay (in that order). I will NOT buy any Palm device with NVFS. NVFS is the work of SATAN! Perhaps P1 may put out a new T6/T7 with *REGULAR* RAM? If so, that would be doable - but they're ain't no way I'm dealing with NVFS - no way. I really do think that the T3 was the high water mark in the P1 era.

BUT - Another option is to see what PPC 2005 offers (coming March 2005?). Perhaps MSFT has cleaned up the OS and polished it up. If they have, I may pull the trigger on a Dell Axim VGA/WIFI.

So I'm basically playing it by ear.

Et tu?