View: Reading the lines in the Palm By: Jørgen Sundgot, Friday 30th August 2002, 13:26 GMT
There's no satisfying Jørgen Sundgot's craving for top-secret information about devices; this time, a company called Palm is the target of his investigations. Can you keep a secret?
The Internet is a wonderful invention - and Americans have a special knack for exploiting its full potential. That's why you always find us so grateful when the FCC and other U.S. government offices such as, say, the U.S. Patent Office, give us a little peek of what is to come but really wasn't meant for the eyes of the public. Recently, there has been a flurry of exposure of Samsung's new devices here at infoSync thanks to U.S. regulatory organ FCC, but today, I'd like to talk about another company; Palm.
You see, lately, there has been quite a bit of speculation around the web concerning new handhelds from Palm to be announced later this year. Seeing as how Palm will introduce its first handheld based on Palm OS 5 later this year, expectations are high as it will be the first Palm OS handheld with enough raw horsepower to compete directly with the Pocket PC platform - yet retaining the user friendliness Palm OS is known for.
As it turns out, Palm's new handhelds haven't gone the U.S. Patent Office by unnoticed, and not only are the Tungsten and Zire names that have been circulating lately to be found there; there's even a third one - and it sounds a heck of a lot more exciting than the two first ones. While Tungsten will be a high-end Palm OS 5 product line and Zire a low-end Palm OS 4 product line according to prior information, there's also a top-secret joker in the line-up - called Veld.
Palm has listings for both Zire and Palm Zire, and Tungsten and Palm Tungsten with the USPTO Trademark department. The Veld name is however registered only as Veld, and although it has the same broad references as the Zire and Tungsten trademarks, it's not - as of yet - registered under Palm Veld. All three listings contain seven references in their text, of which the most exciting relate to credit card services, media player capabilities and digital transmission of voice, data, images, audio, video, messages and more. Other references point to signs that Palm has major plans for digital content for its new handhelds, but it's in no way a clear message of what is to come.
The company has previously said that it's working to bring a handheld that features not only data but also voice capabilities to market, and perhaps Veld is the name of that product or product line? I'm not sure, but my guess is Veld has stayed secret so long for a good reason, while the Tungsten and Zire names have slipped to the public. Should Veld be that device, I'd also say it's long overdue since it's no secret that Palm - or perhaps more correctly, the Palm OS platform - needs to start innovating again.
Sony is pulling the load for now, but one company alone doesn't make a successful platform - and apart from having exotic names, Zire, Tungsten and Veld could contribute to keep the Palm OS platform alive under heavy fire from Pocket PC and to an increasing degree Symbian. They don't have all the time in the world though, so Palm and PalmSource: get your groove on, we all want to see what you're cooking.
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