Palm Licenses Palm OS

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 13 December 2006

Announcing it has signed a perpetual license with the company formerly known as Palmsource, the maker of the Treo smartphone show's it's not totally committed to Windows Mobile. PalmSource, which owns the Palm OS operating system and had been spun off from the parent company several years ago, was acquired by Access in September last year. Access, a Japanese company, paid nearly double what the company was worth at the time and attracted the ire of Motorola which offered nearly as much as Access, but was subsequently duded out of the deal despite claiming to have had its bid accepted by Palmsource. Since then Access has worked to open up the Palm OS and has continued development of Linux based mobile operating systems and has also signed a few handset makers up to the Palm OS. The version Palm has licensed is that used in several Palm Treo smartphones. The company is getting access to the source code so under the agreement, Palm has a perpetual license to use as well as to innovate on the Palm OS Garnet code base. Palm will also retain ownership rights in its innovations. The new agreement also provides Palm flexibility to use Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any Palm product, and together with any other system technologies. The company plans to ensure that applications now compatible with Palm OS Garnet will operate with little or no modification in future Palm products that employ Palm OS Garnet as the company evolves it over time to support Palm's product differentiation strategy. In addition, Palm has secured an expansion of its existing patent license from Access to cover all current and future Palm products, regardless of the underlying operating system. For all of these rights, Palm will pay Access a total of $44 million, which will be paid in Palm's third quarter of fiscal year 2007, and will be recognised as an expense over the next several years. This single payment eliminates the requirement for Palm to pay Access continuing royalties of 10s of millions of dollars over the coming years. www.palm.com www.access-company.com Related news items The Poor Man's Palm -02/10/2007 Palm Goes Consumer With Treo 500v -12/09/2007 First Windows 6 Palm In Australia -12/09/2007 Palm To Update Treo 750 OS -27/03/2007 Treo 750 On Telstra NextG -18/02/2007 Newer news items New AMD Chip For Handhelds -13/02/2007 Philips Signs Last Of Its Phone Business Over To CEC -12/02/2007 Samsung Quits Notebook Business -29/01/2007 Nokia New Year Party Attracts Millions -02/01/2007 Just For The Record: No Ferrari Laptops Here -02/01/2007 Older news items Enterprise Mobility To Grow At 9.5%: IDC -05/12/2006 Mobile Email To Grow At 21% A Year -05/12/2006 Battery Recalls Could Change Market Share: IDC -30/11/2006 Gates Admits To Online Office, But Denies Significance -07/11/2006 NTP To Palm: Right. You! Outside. -06/11/2006 Tag This Now: