Palm OS revision now due in first half of 2009

A new operating system for Palm may not arrive until the middle of next year, instead of early next year.

(Credit: CNET)

Palm's bid to join the modern era of mobile computing will have to wait a little longer.

The company reported yet another quarterly loss last week, and The Register noticed that Palm CEO Ed Colligan has tweaked the shipping expectations for the company's new Linux-based operating system, known as Palm OS II. Once thought to arrive in early 2009, the new operating system is now targeted for the first half of 2009, which generally means May-June 2009 in the tech industry.

Palm has managed to keep its brand afloat over the past year with the success of the Centro, an inexpensive version of the Treo. Palm sold more than 1 million smartphones during the past quarter, but it's not clear whether Palm actually makes any money on the sale of a Centro. The company reported a net loss of $41.9 million for the quarter.

If it wasn't for Palm's decision to embrace the Windows Mobile operating system--used on its latest Treo Pro handset--the company might have gone out of business long ago. The current version of Palm OS was first introduced in 2004 and hasn't really been updated since 2006. An awful lot has changed in this market since then, and Palm desperately needs new software to challenge the likes of Apple, Research In Motion, Symbian, and now Google.

[rpjohnt]

I love Palm. Every time I pick up my wife's centro I want to throw my windows 6.0 phone out the window into a bottomless pit ringed with fire, where it rains acid and has hail made up of stinging bee's with lazers on their heads. I miss my simple treo 650, even with all the bugs. It still rebooted less than my windows phone.

[Rants&Raves]

I've been a Palm aficionado since the Palm III; I personally feel like Palm has crewed us over. Our data is stuck in a proprietary format in a proprietary platform that is not being updated, and to which we have adapted our daily behaviours and routines. A software company can't disappear just like that and hope that its users will still be there when they finally come back to life.

[wilmarubble]

I've been a Palm OS evangelist since I got my first Handspring in 1999. I love Graffiti. Palm OS is the most stable OS I have ever used. I would be lost without my Palm T/X. I call it "my second brain". I hope the folks at Palm Inc. get their act together. It would be disappointing to find an alternative.

[JBSimmons]

Same here. I currently use a Tungsten E2. Now that I have worries that the bottom writing surface is being eroded from the pressure of the pen (I use plastic overlays all the time), I have also worried about the demise of Palm. Just purchased another E2 as a backup. Really had to weigh the transition to the TX. Since most of my accesories are for the E2, I decided to stick with the E2. It's a great machine - my second brain as well. I also like it's Office interopability. I would not buy a Windows Mobile despite the raves. Doesn't MSFT have enough money already? Palm should return to their original roots and get out of the phone market. Seems like every gadget we buy has to have a phone in it. Enough already. The PDA has more pros than cons. I have had only 3 Palm PDA crashes and that was on the Palm V trying to migrate my apps to the Palm Tungsten E. Thank God the E2 has static memory. A move that should have been made with the Tungsten E. When Palm makes a PDA with METAL instead of PLASTIC, it's going to last for a very long time, provided proper care is taken of it. Do I regret buying the backup unit now instead of waiting for an OS upgrade? No. I'm sure that when the upgrade comes, the E2 will be able to handle it. Palm should have lowered prices long ago. Now the only current PDAs are the TX and lowly Zire 22 entry model. Whatever happened to their premium Life Drive Unit with a HD? Wasn't that good enough? It's almost the equialent of an iPod and you get the PDA as well. A return to basics will save the compnany. Most times this works for most companies in trouble. They haven't got the right CEO's running it yet.

[man290663]

The Palm OS is one of the most stable and interconnectable ever it actually connects to Windows Unix and the Mac OS easily and reliably. It has not had much updating since 2006 with the T|X but then it never needed it.

Its biggest drawback was lack of marketing and push and with Sony pulling out of the market with it branded Clie's Palm lost impetus and embraced the buggy windows Mobile in the belief this would save them but in effect the Buggy and unreliable nature of Windows Mobile has caused us to migrate from Palm.

The only real alternative to the Palm OS has emerged in the Ipod Touch and Iphone with its 2.x version its become the PDA that Palm wanted to become! The company could have taken an marketing lesson from apple and sold its ease of use and difference rather than join the handheld windows Mobile train.

My trusty TX has been replaced by the iPhone as refusal of many UK operators to allow Palm devices (Symbian and RIM sold the idea to them that Palm did not) has resulted in a slow death of a superior PDA - where did we last hear this ... it was Apples Newton now reborn phoenix Like as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Going Linux is a bit to late as the marketability of Palm has been eroded by its attempt to use Windows Mobile and its less than successful results for users.

[thedreaming]

I don't know if I would call the iphone a pda. It's a cool little mac that has a phone in it, but it doesn't even have a task list. What pda would forget the task list? It doesn't even have copy and paste. Palm, Windows Mobile, even Blackberry has copy and paste!

[Jonathan]

Who cares. Palm OS is about as current to modern OS's as DOS is to Windows Vista. I'm sorry but stability and speed stoped cutting it as the sole selling point back in 2002 when Pocket PC was playing music, reading e-books on high res color displays (I still remember the CEO of the month at Palm stating at CES that users don't want high res color displays....riiiight.), browsing the internet.
6 years later, and what? a dozen CEO's? What does Palm have? An OS that has more patches, and hacks to get it to do things that the OS was never designed to do....Its a cludge of an operating system and its why its initials are POS.
This revamp should have happened in 2004 at the absolute latest. Instead here we are on the cusp of 2009 and we are still using this POS. I hope Android eats Palm's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

[justusderdv]

Lotsa talk but judging by the comments made so far alone, those who use Palms no better. There is nothing like a Palm. I can't tell you how many times I've whipped my T/X out at a business meeting to use an ap like Mobile DB, Wi-Fi, or Splash ID to have all the IPhone and Blackberry users turn slightly green. I'm waiting for my favorite handheld company to come out with a smartphone that does everything my T/X does as reliably (including the wi-fi!). For me, that means a Palm OS, plain and simple. Till then, my three year old flip phone that syncs with the T/X will just have to do. I like the Centro, and my server wants to give me one, but I'll wait for the Pro with Palm OS or some other engenious device. Why am I so loyal to Palm? They work, all the time. The aps are premiere. The company stands behind their product. That's good enough to win my loyalty.

[Worldbfree]

I concur with you justus, Palm just gets it done. I have owned a so called smart phone for a while, Treo 270, Treo 600, Treo 650, Treo 700wx and now the Centro. My "Palm Pilot" experience has been very pleasant. Every year I try to convince myself to go out and purchase a new phone and now the HTC line up has my attention, but I cannot justify spending my hard earned scratch for a phone unless it does more than my previous phone. The Centro gets it done for me period. But, Wifi and GPS are rage right now but is it worth it? Love the Iphone & gphone, but they have their shortcomings aswell. The Treo 800p or 850p (if it happens) could be my next phone. Until then, Centro is hard to beat $ for $.

I have been with Palm since Palm Pilot (first Palm product) from US Robotics and I have updated through most units up to the current T/X. I sync to my Mac daily, even when on the road or in Europe, with my laptop. My records have remained intact over all that time, and people are impressed when I whip out my T/X and can give them details about them that they themselves have long since forgotten. I can copy and paste an entire document into the Palm or the Palm Desktop and retrieve it years later. The Wi-Fi is fine where there is a signal. There is simply no other OS that can match this, and I have bought a backup T/X just so when the current unit dies, my data (which is far more important than the hardware) stays alive. I hope that Palm, which invented this form factor in the first place (after Apple's disastrous Newton attempt) is able to bring the OS up to date and that it thrives for years to come.

[jmansfie]

I sure hope the new OS is backward compatible with the memo and contacts, etc. and will run the same 3rd party software like Mobiledb Light! I too am addicted and frustrated that the proprietary Palm Memo file system is so incompatible with the Windows-like file system of my Blackberry 8830 World .