Palm’s officials announced their decision to stop using the company’s Palm OS operating system. All its efforts will be now focused on the upcoming Palm webOS, which was developed to power the company’s new Pre smartphone. There are very few details available about the software and Palm is looking to keep the information to itself a while longer in order to build up the expectations.
Palm’s CEO Ed Colligan said that the company’s Centro mobile device will be the last to use the Palm OS. “There will be no more Palm OS products,” he explained, adding that “We will transition to webOS as our core OS, in addition to supporting Microsoft Windows products in the enterprise segment of the market.” The new system will have a strong focus on the Web and users will be able to synchronize their data with online services such as Google and Facebook. It will include features such as Palm Synergy, which will bring together in a single screen information from calendars, contacts and instant messaging applications.
He also addressed the rumors about Apple’s intentions to file a lawsuit on the Pre’s multi-touch interface that might be infringing on Apple’s patents. He made it clear that at this point there are no such issues with the iPhone’s maker and that Palm has built a very extensive patent portofolio in the mobile space. Palm has more than 1,600 patents.
The upcoming webOS will be easy to use and according to the statements of the company’s officials, anyone who knows how to program with tools like JavaScript, HTML and Cascading Style Sheets will be able to white applications for the new operating system. During last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, where the Pre was revealed, Colligan said that the new platform was created from the ground up and that it is going to completely redefine the center of the people’s access point to the Internet.
The webOS will not be open source, and the company has no intentions for now to license it. “We’re completely focused on delivering an integrated solution to consumers,” explained Colligan.
The new smartphone will be launched through several partnerships with carriers in several different markets such as Latin America, Europe and North America. In the U.S. Sprint was selected to be the exclusive partner carrier, at least for this year – as the company is hoping to attract other carriers in 2010. The smartphone is expected to come out by the beginning of the summer and the expectations are extremely high, many considering it the first real competition to the Apple’s iPhone.
The company will also open an applications store, which will allow third parties, unlike Apple’s iPhone App Store, which has a closed distribution model.
The Pre smartphone will feature a sliding keyboard and also multi-touch 3.1 inch display screen. There will be 8 Giga Bytes available on its onboard storage, Wi-Fi b/g, a 3 megapixels camera with LED flash and also Bluetooth 2.1.
