Developers' Thoughts on PalmOS

After Palm and Palm Source chose to go separate ways, both ACCESS and Palm seem to be interested, providing a replacement for Palm OS. Palm Source was acquired by ACCESS and their main focus right now is their new ACCESS Linux platform that was intended to replace the OS (Garnet), but in the meantime ACCCESS has pushed back its release date to the first half of 2007 so we've yet to see the platform released.

On the other hand, Palm has licensed the Garnet code, for $44 million, and under the agreement can freely modify the code in any way. Word has it that Palm is also intending to use Garnet as the foundation of its own development program.

With that being said, it's not very easy to predict which of the two companies will be responsible for a Palm OS replacement. After a series of interviews at PocketFactory, third party developers' opinion on the subject was revealed.

According to Howard Tomlinson, CEO of mobile game developer Astraware, Palm OS still has a lot to offer, although it is very unlikely that it will go beyond Garnet. "I don't think we could make a viable business by supporting only Palm OS though, we've known that for some time. Until now we've really just focussed on two platforms - Palm OS and Windows Mobile�, with the intention of supporting both of those well", he added.

The COO of iambic Inc., Adriano Chiaretta and Steward Dewar from Pimlico Software shared the same opinion and declared that while there are so many Windows Mobile 5 devices on the market, developers will not need to focus as much on Palm applications. Moreover, building Windows Mobile applications that can be easily ported to a Linux platform seems to be the best solution thus far.