14 DAY TRIAL // The famous PDA (personal digital assistant) manufacturer, Palm Inc. had made an announcement according to which it would start shipping Linux smartphones by the end of this year. Ed Colligan, chief executive with Palm stated at the time that the Linux version they intend to develop for their Treo smartphones would come to replace the Palm OS 5 , a.k.a 'Garnet' as code name.
Recently, Ed Colligan has stated that this release has been delayed until next year. According to Mr. Colligan:
"We [Palm] will deliver some new smartphone products through the rest of this calendar year on Windows Mobile and Palm OS ... Products based on the new Linux platform will not arrive until some time next year."
The forthcoming Linux-cored OS is said to offer full support for the existing Palm OS applications but also to bring software innovations. For example, the Palm officials claim they want the new platform to allow simultaneous voice and data traffic and faster application switching. They have also said they intend to build out support for online applications.
At the time he made the initial announcement, Colligan said that the company has no intentions of licensing its Linux operating system and that they would continue the development of its Windows based smartphones for the enterprise market too. However, the Palm OS 5 had not registered any major upgrades since the release of Palm OS 5.4.The company then intended to release a Palm OS Cobalt 6.0 later, as a modernized successor to the Garnet series, but in the end this version has been canceled.
Palm, Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, California - United States, is best known for PDA products such as the Zire, Tungsten PDAs, Treo smartphones and the LifeDrive. Previous product lines include the Palm Pilot, Palm III, Palm V and Palm VII.