Palm Announces China Initiatives

Posted By: Ryan Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:50:08 AM

Palm today boosted its commitment to China with a three-tiered advance into the rapidly growing market. Palm has announced new plans to extend Palm's presence in China and advance the company's goal of worldwide geographic and demographic growth. Palm has established a new Pacific R&D and Operations center in Shanghai, announced cooperation with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator, with more than 240 million subscribers and the Treo 680 has been launched in cooperation with CEC Telecom Science and Technology Co. and distribution partner, Beijing Riverwill Communication Technology Co. Ltd.

"We're growing the Palm infrastructure for success in China, an important part of our international-expansion strategy," said John Hartnett, Palm senior vice president, Global Markets. "With a stronger local presence, we believe we can accelerate the success of Treo smartphones across Asia and beyond. And we are thrilled to serve the Chinese marketplace by working with the world's largest carrier, China Mobile."

To meet the growing global opportunity, Palm is establishing its first R&D and Operations Centre in the Asia Pacific region. The Shanghai-based centre will work to accelerate the delivery of next-generation smartphones to mobile operators, partners and customers worldwide; ensure local language capabilities are incorporated into Treo smartphones; and facilitate close collaboration between Palm and its manufacturing partners. The centre will be key to the delivery of new mobile-computing solutions aimed at redefining the smartphone experience through award-winning Treo smartphones.

The Palm Treo 680 smartphone, a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone, will be brought to market with CECT, certified by China Mobile and distributed by Riverwill. According to IDC, the China market is expected to be close to 12.1 million data-centric converged devices shipped by 2011, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 30 percent. This presents a tremendous growth opportunity for Palm Treo smartphones.

"We are pleased that the new Palm Treo 680 supports China Mobile PushMail and Mobile Email, delivering email solutions to even more customers," said Mr. Shen Wei Zhong, deputy general manager, Department of Key Accounts, China Mobile Communication Corporation.

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Just positioning themselves to...

SeldomVisitor @ 3/6/2007 1:29:42 PM #

...be bought by ACCESS!

I mean...who else!?

Giggle.

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

hkklife @ 3/6/2007 2:32:33 PM #

Twrock suggested this as something he heard through the grapevine (remember he resides in Japan currently) about a month ago. And let's not forget TVoR "suggesting" Palm was going to be bought out by a company with 6 letters in their name.

I also threw out the possibility of NTT DoCoMo snagging Palm and/or Access a while back, if for no other reason than for the Palm/Treo trademarks/name clout/domestic carrier agreements.

Another thought:

Palm gets "split" down the middle, with Hawkins & co. taking the legacy PDA line & the Palm name over to Numenta but with Access taking the Treo line/branding/carrier agreements for use for a big US push.

At THIS stage of the game, with people still equating "Palm" to "PalmPilots", I'd wager that the Treo brand has about as much equity/clout/recognition as "Palm" itself does!

That thought is, quite possibly.....worth a "giggle".

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

twrock @ 3/6/2007 7:19:46 PM #

Small correction: I'm in Taiwan, not Japan. "Taiwan, the world's OEM."

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

twrock @ 3/6/2007 7:20:36 PM #

Oh, and as much as I'd like to just let that completely groundless "acquisition of Palm by ACCESS" rumor just hang out there, I was only blowing smoke. (At least that's what my sources told me to come back here and claim in an attempt to cover for them.)

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

SeldomVisitor @ 3/6/2007 7:28:21 PM #

> ...Taiwan...

Hey!

Ask HTC when they're gonna acquire PALM!?

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

ballistic @ 3/6/2007 7:40:04 PM #

GOOGLE has six letters...

content is going mobile. visit www.mobileread.com for news and discussion.

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

SeldomVisitor @ 3/6/2007 8:06:57 PM #

HTC, INC has 6 letters!

RE: Just positioning themselves to...

SeldomVisitor @ 3/6/2007 8:07:18 PM #

DOCOMO has 6 letters (and thus we have gone full circle back to ACCESS! Life is good.)

reinventing the wheel...

LTH @ 3/6/2007 2:36:53 PM #

rather than "establishing a new Pacific R&D and Operations center in Shanghai", they'd rather ask GSPDA to do the job

RE: reinventing the wheel...

twrock @ 3/6/2007 7:11:38 PM #

While they are at it, why don't they either "fix" or just plain shut down their current Asia-Pacific headquarters. My dealings with them over the past year were frustrating beyond measure!

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/