Palm's CEO, Ed Colligan has done an interview with APC and we're finally starting to hear what Palm has in store with their next generation operating system.

"So let’s talk about the future – and specifically the forthcoming all-new Palm OS, which is codenamed Nova and said to be built around Linux. Colligan calls it “Palm OS” and later “Palm 2.0”, both times his fingers drawing quotation marks in the air as he speaks. Palm 2.0, as in Web 2.0, although he makes it clear that “I’m not coming up with the branding right now – whether it’s Palm OS 2.0 or Next Generation, we’re not coming up with the branding right now. But this is something different to this” he says, pointing to the Centro.

Colligan speaks of this as being a “next-generation operating system with much more capabilities, driven around the Internet and Web-based applications”. It reminds us of a very modern take on the original OS, as well as a revisiting of the strategy which saw Palm create everything from the OS to the handhelds. It worked fine for Palm in the early days, and it’s working pretty well for Apple too.

“We’re focused on executing our own system, mostly because we really believe that to create the most compelling solution it should be an integrated package much like we started with the Palm OS and doing the original Palm Pilots: we did the operating system, we did the hardware and we did the whole synching architecture and the desktop tie-in, which is equivalent to the Web these days. One of the things we wanted to do is to make sure that we had an end-to-end solution we really controlled and could deliver the end-user experience we want to deliver. We think it’s going to be stunning and breakthrough in its execution, and we’re working on some very exciting new devices to go with it”.

And for at least the short term, that OS will continue to be offered in low-end devices typified by the Centro. “Centro is our consumer line of products, the start of a product line to hit that demographic and price point” Colligan says. “Centro will be strictly Palm OS”.

At the same time, Palm will continue to promote the Treo line of Windows Mobile smartphones to business customers. “Microsoft is the de facto standard in corporate email, and I think they should be the de facto standard in mobile email. If you have an Exchange server today you can already get mobile push email without installing a single other piece of third-party equipment, so it’s pretty easy to deploy. I don’t believe we could ever create a position in the business community that competes with Microsoft, it just wouldn’t make any sense.”

That ‘next generation’ Palm OS will slot in between the Centro and Treo lines under a new ‘prosumer’ brand that’s yet to be decided, Colligan explains. “We’re going to continue to look at those three line areas – consumer, prosumer and enterprise. Treo is today more of our mainstream prosumer product which is extended into the enterprise, but over time you’ll see some branding work done on the top two to make sure they’re really well delineated.”

Labels: centro, palm, palm os, treo, windows mobile

¶ posted by Jimmie Geddes, Editor @ 5/28/2008 12:08:00 PM