14 DAY TRIAL // Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm is expected to come to the market with some pretty appealing devices in the near future, and the company's chief has just confirmed that.
Palm was bought by HP several months ago, as the company lacked the necessary resources to remain an active player on the mobile phone market, and now the development of new devices ramped up, courtesy of HP's financial resouces.
Palm chief Jon Rubinstein made an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit, where here unveiled some more details on the company's plans for the future.
“We’ve got some great products in the works,” Rubinstein said, a recent article on All Things Digital reads.
“Some smartphones, a great tablet coming. I think we have several products that will be hits when they come out….Everyone forgets, we just closed this acquisition in July….This time next year, you’ll see us in a very different position,” Rubinstein continued.
This is in line with some of the previous rumors on the matter, which suggested that we might see Palm launching a number of up to six new webOS-based products next year. A tablet was also tipped to be in the works, and Rubinstein confirmed that.
Of course, nothing is surprising in Palm's plans for the future, especially since HP was rumored before to have bought Palm mainly for the webOS platform, which should be included in a wide range of HP devices.
One thing that should be mentioned here is that HP plans on putting the OS inside products outside the mobile segment, even if Palm intended it initially mainly for smartphone use.
“Palm created the PDA (personal digital assistant) space with the Pilot and the smartphone space after it with the Treo,” Rubinstein said. “So by birthright, Palm should have owned the smartphone market, but it just lost its way. It’s a very similar story to what happened with Apple.”
But the battle is not lost just yet, the company's chief implies. Next year should bring to shelves a nice range of highly appealing Palm devices running under webOS, better positioning the company on the market.