TCL buys Palm brand from HP, aiming for a Silicon Valley comeback

[Shawn Knight]

While Apple is often credited with kicking off the modern smartphone era, serious tech enthusiasts hopped on the smartphone bandwagon long before the iPhone arrived in 2007. For many, their first smartphone came from Palm in the form of a Treo.

Once Apple, Google and a host of others joined the mix, however, Palm struggled to keep pace with phones like the Pre failing to excite buyers. Things continued to go downhill and in mid-2010, HP acquired the handset maker for $1.2 billion.

HP was prepared to take the world by storm with its Touchpad tablet running webOS but that ultimately turned into a colossal failure that led HP to sell the webOS code and patents to LG in early 2013.

Palm fans now have reason for cautious optimism as Chinese consumer electronics company TCL has acquired the rights to the Palm brand from HP.

TCL plans to resurrect the once-dominant Palm in Silicon Valley and according to TCL CEO George Guo, it’ll be rebuilt as a collaborative effort with input from Palm fans that’ll go down as the largest crowd-sourced project in the industry.

While commendable, it won’t exactly be an easy task considering the ultra competitive landscape of the smartphone market in the US. As for what OS the new Palm will be running, it’s anyone’s guess at this point. WebOS is obviously out as it now belongs to LG but TCL currently sells phones running Android, Firefox OS and Windows Phone so any of those could be a possibility.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/59323-tcl-buys-palm-brand-hp-aiming-silicon-valley.html

 

[Guest]

A Windows Phone platform with a physical keyboard would be pretty sweet for business use.

 

[Jamesbrah]

A Windows Phone platform with a physical keyboard would be pretty sweet for business use.

disagree. users do not want keyboards. they want high end phones that everyone else has. they want to use iphones, they want to use high end android. they don't want weird 'different' keyboard phones

 

[psycros]

A Windows Phone platform with a physical keyboard would be pretty sweet for business use.

disagree. users do not want keyboards. they want high end phones that everyone else has. they want to use iphones, they want to use high end android. they don't want weird 'different' keyboard phones

Gee, I'm so glad you know the hearts and minds of ALL smartphone customers, even the ones in the developing world that still use a lot of k/b devices. Also, the Blackberry Passport, which is doing quite well for a niche device, says hi. The Classic will probably do even better.

 

[Jamesbrah]

Gee, I'm so glad you know the hearts and minds of ALL smartphone customers, even the ones in the developing world that still use a lot of k/b devices. Also, the Blackberry Passport, which is doing quite well for a niche device, says hi. The Classic will probably do even better.

I dont know if you're a blackberry fanboy or something, but the vast majority of users in business do not care about anything apart from how the phone looks and feels. unless you are in a business that has very strict security, most business will just go with apple/android (mostly apple).

I'm talking about BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS. not all users. the fact of the matter is due to the marketshare of all smartphone sales around the world, the majority prefer either apple or android. this translates even moreso into the business world, where typically businesses have made the unfortunate transition away from blackberry devices which was the norm several years ago.