PCWorld.com - PDA Pundit: The Palms That Won’t Be Palms: “To jump-start its entry into the mass-market mobile phone business, PalmSource decided to buy a company that was already producing software for phones. And it found one in China: Last month, PalmSource completed its acquisition of China MobileSoft. You’ve probably never heard of that company, but its MobileSoft Technology subsidiary (based in Nanjing, China) develops software that up to now has only been licensed by Chinese phone vendors.
That’s a plus from PalmSource’s point of view, since it gets instant entr�e to the burgeoning Chinese cell phone market. It also reaps a benefit in the North American phone market by providing PalmSource with an operating system for low-end handsets.
Basically, PalmSource just needs to tweak a few elements and slap on a new user interface–one that echoes the look and feel of existing Palm OSes–onto MobileSoft’s phone software, and voil�, PalmSource has software to license for the millions of inexpensive cell phones out there. The new phones will have an address book that’s data-compatible with the ones in today’s Palms, but they won’t run traditional Palm apps. Phones based on this operating system will be called PalmSource Feature Phones, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the devices start appearing in the next few months.”
Finally, the mainstream press is starting to catch on…
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