Something New, Something Old?
So it appears that Palm Inc. has been quite busy lately with rumors now circulating about a “response to the Apple iPhone” in the works. Not such a huge surprise since Palm has been in the handheld buisness since day one but with the iPhone due June 20th I can’t really imagine Palm coming to the table with something quite as interesting. I could be wrong, but with all the hype being generated by the iPhone’s design it stands to reason that *someone* is going to come up with a decent knock-off, might as well be Palm! The important part of this announcement really is the realization that even if the iPhone is a financial dog for Apple the design itself has made a huge impact on the smartphone market. I personally love the idea of the touchscreen vs. the traditional keypad and dedicated buttons found on my current phone; the Blackberry 8800 and can’t wait to see if the iPhone concept takes the cell phone market by storm.
Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, ipod, linux, mp3, palm
In addition to the upcoming Palm announcement Microsoft also appears to be ready to release some new information on their upcoming mobile OS efforts. I suspect that both of these announcements are going to have some shared aspects with Microsoft perhaps providing the OS for the new Palm device. Current rumors are tied to Palm using a new Linux variant to replace the aging “Palm OS” but I would suspect that this is some ways off. A recent statement from Microsoft’s top exec Steve Ballmer seems to point to Microsoft pushing things strictly from the software side of the equation vs. getting too involved in the hardware manufacturing process. I definitely see both Palm and Microsoft getting into the iPhone competitor game with a quality offering simply because they can’t afford to have Apple stage a repeat of the digital music player land grab they managed with the iPod.
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